Heavy fight­ing raged overnight and in­to Sun­day across Gaza, in­clud­ing in the dev­as­tat­ed north, as Is­rael pressed ahead with its of­fen­sive af­ter the U.S. blocked the lat­est in­ter­na­tion­al push for a cease-fire and rushed more mu­ni­tions to its close al­ly.

Is­rael has faced ris­ing in­ter­na­tion­al out­rage and calls for a per­ma­nent cease-fire af­ter the killing of thou­sands of Pales­tin­ian civil­ians. Near­ly 85% of Gaza’s 2.3 mil­lion peo­ple have been dis­placed with­in the be­sieged ter­ri­to­ry, where U.N. agen­cies say there is no safe place to flee.

The Unit­ed States has lent vi­tal sup­port to the of­fen­sive once again in re­cent days, by ve­to­ing Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil ef­forts to end the fight­ing that en­joyed wide in­ter­na­tion­al sup­port, and by push­ing through an emer­gency sale of over $100 mil­lion worth of tank am­mu­ni­tion to Is­rael.

Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu thanked U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden for the “im­por­tant am­mu­ni­tion for the con­tin­u­a­tion of the war,” and for sup­port­ing Is­rael at the Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil.

IS­RAEL-HAMAS WAR

The U.S. has pledged un­wa­ver­ing sup­port for Is­rael’s goal of crush­ing Hamas’ mil­i­tary and gov­ern­ing abil­i­ties, and re­turn­ing all the hostages cap­tured in the Oct. 7 at­tack that trig­gered the war. Hamas and oth­er Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tants stormed in­to south­ern Is­rael that day, killing some 1,200 peo­ple and cap­tur­ing around 240, over 100 of whom were re­leased dur­ing a week­long cease-fire late last month.

In re­sponse to the at­tack, Is­rael launched an air and ground war that has killed thou­sands of Pales­tini­ans, most­ly civil­ians, and forced some 1.9 mil­lion peo­ple to flee their homes. With on­ly a trick­le of aid al­lowed in, and de­liv­ery ren­dered im­pos­si­ble in much of the ter­ri­to­ry, Pales­tini­ans face se­vere short­ages of food, wa­ter and oth­er ba­sic goods.

U.N. Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­to­nio Guter­res, who in­voked a rarely-used pow­er last week to call for a cease-fire, said “we are fac­ing a se­vere risk of col­lapse of the hu­man­i­tar­i­an sys­tem.”

“The sit­u­a­tion is fast de­te­ri­o­rat­ing in­to a cat­a­stro­phe with po­ten­tial­ly ir­re­versible im­pli­ca­tions for the Pales­tini­ans as a whole and for peace and se­cu­ri­ty in the re­gion,” he told a fo­rum in Qatar.

Is­rael’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­er, Tzachi Haneg­bi, told Is­rael’s Chan­nel 12 TV late Sat­ur­day that the U.S. has set no dead­line for Is­rael to achieve its goals of dis­man­tling Hamas and re­turn­ing all the hostages.

“The eval­u­a­tion that this can’t be mea­sured in weeks is cor­rect, and I’m not sure it can be mea­sured in months,” he said.

FIGHT­ING AND AR­RESTS IN THE NORTH

Is­raeli forces con­tin­ue to face heavy re­sis­tance, even in north­ern Gaza, where en­tire neigh­bor­hoods have been flat­tened by air strikes and where ground troops have been op­er­at­ing for over six weeks.

Is­rael’s Chan­nel 13 TV broad­cast footage show­ing dozens of de­tainees stripped to their un­der­wear with their hands in the air. Sev­er­al held as­sault ri­fles above their heads, and one man could be seen slow­ly walk­ing for­ward and plac­ing a gun on the ground be­fore re­turn­ing to the group.

Oth­er videos in re­cent days have shown groups of un­armed men held in sim­i­lar con­di­tions, with­out clothes, bound and blind­fold­ed. De­tainees from a sep­a­rate group who were re­leased Sat­ur­day told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press they had been beat­en and de­nied food and wa­ter.

Is­rael has not com­ment­ed on the videos, but gov­ern­ment spokesman Ey­lon Levy said “in­creas­ing num­bers” of Hamas fight­ers were sur­ren­der­ing and hand­ing over their weapons, call­ing it a sign of “col­laps­ing” morale.

Res­i­dents said there was still heavy fight­ing un­der­way in the Gaza City neigh­bor­hood of Shi­jaiyah and the Ja­baliya refugee camp, a dense ur­ban area hous­ing Pales­tin­ian fam­i­lies who fled or were dri­ven out of what is now Is­rael dur­ing the 1948 war sur­round­ing its cre­ation.

“They are at­tack­ing any­thing that moves,” said Hamza Abu Fa­touh, a res­i­dent of Shi­jaiyah. He said the dead and wound­ed were left in the streets as am­bu­lances could no longer reach the area, where Is­raeli snipers and tanks had po­si­tioned them­selves among the aban­doned build­ings.

“The re­sis­tance al­so fights back,” he added, say­ing gun­bat­tles had raged late Sat­ur­day.

Is­rael or­dered the evac­u­a­tion of the north­ern third of the ter­ri­to­ry, in­clud­ing Gaza City, ear­ly in the war, but tens of thou­sands of peo­ple have re­mained there, fear­ing that the south would be no safer or that they would nev­er be al­lowed to re­turn to their homes.

Heavy fight­ing was al­so un­der­way in and around the south­ern city of Khan You­nis.

WAIT­ING FOR FOOD

In cen­tral Gaza, hun­dreds of Pales­tini­ans wait­ed for flour out­side an U.N. dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ter. The price of food has soared as much of the ter­ri­to­ry faces se­vere short­ages. Ab­dul­salam al-Ma­j­dalawi said he has come every day for near­ly two weeks, hop­ing to get food for his fam­i­ly of sev­en.

“Every day, we spend five or six hours here and re­turn home (emp­ty hand­ed),” he said. “Thank God, to­day they drew our name.”

With the war in its third month, the Pales­tin­ian death toll in Gaza has sur­passed 17,700, the ma­jor­i­ty women and chil­dren, ac­cord­ing to the Health Min­istry in the Hamas-con­trolled ter­ri­to­ry. The min­istry does not dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween civil­ian and com­bat­ant deaths.

Is­rael holds Hamas re­spon­si­ble for civil­ian ca­su­al­ties, say­ing the mil­i­tants put civil­ians in dan­ger by fight­ing in dense, res­i­den­tial neigh­bor­hoods. The mil­i­tary says 97 Is­raeli sol­diers have died in the ground of­fen­sive. Pales­tini­ans mil­i­tants have al­so con­tin­ued fir­ing rock­ets in­to Is­rael.

Ne­tanyahu’s of­fice said Sun­day that Hamas still has 117 hostages, as well as the re­mains of 20 peo­ple killed in cap­tiv­i­ty or dur­ing the Oct. 7 at­tack. The mil­i­tants hope to ex­change them for Pales­tini­ans im­pris­oned by Is­rael.

Is­rael says it has pro­vid­ed de­tailed in­struc­tions for civil­ians to evac­u­ate to safer ar­eas, even as it con­tin­ues to strike what it says are mil­i­tant tar­gets in all parts of the ter­ri­to­ry. Thou­sands have fled to the south­ern town of Rafah and oth­er ar­eas along the bor­der with Egypt in re­cent days — one of the last ar­eas where aid agen­cies are able to de­liv­er food and wa­ter.

The war has raised ten­sions across the re­gion, with Lebanon’s Hezbol­lah trad­ing fire with Is­rael along the bor­der and oth­er Iran-backed mil­i­tant groups tar­get­ing the U.S. in Syr­ia and Iraq.

France said one of its war­ships in the Red Sea shot down two drones that had ap­proached it from Yemen, where Iran-backed Houthi rebels have vowed to halt Is­raeli ship­ping through the key wa­ter­way.

Haneg­bi said Is­rael has called on its West­ern al­lies to ad­dress the threat and would give them “some time” to or­ga­nize a re­sponse. But he said if the threats per­sist, “we will act to re­move this block­ade.”

Jobain re­port­ed from Rafah, Gaza Strip, and Magdy from Cairo. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Melanie Lid­man and Ju­lia Frankel in Jerusalem, and Lu­jain Jo in Dubai, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, con­tributed to this re­port.

DEIR AL-BAL­AH, Gaza Strip (AP) —