Is­rael pound­ed tar­gets in the crowd­ed south­ern half of the Gaza Strip on Sat­ur­day and or­dered more neigh­bour­hoods des­ig­nat­ed for at­tack to evac­u­ate, dri­ving up the death toll even as the Unit­ed States and oth­ers urged it to do more to pro­tect Gaza civil­ians a day af­ter a truce col­lapsed.

At least 200 Pales­tini­ans have been killed since the fight­ing re­sumed Fri­day morn­ing fol­low­ing a week­long truce with the ter­ri­to­ry’s rul­ing mil­i­tant group Hamas, ac­cord­ing to the Health Min­istry in Gaza. Sev­er­al homes were hit across Gaza on Sat­ur­day, with mul­ti­ple ca­su­al­ties re­port­ed in a strike that flat­tened a house on the out­skirts of Gaza City.

Sep­a­rate­ly, the min­istry an­nounced that the over­all death toll in Gaza since the Oct. 7 start of the Is­rael-Hamas war sur­passed 15,200, a sharp jump from the pre­vi­ous count of more than 13,300 on Nov. 20. The min­istry stopped is­su­ing dai­ly up­dates of the over­all toll on Nov. 11, fol­low­ing war-re­lat­ed dis­rup­tions of con­nec­tiv­i­ty and hos­pi­tal op­er­a­tions.

The min­istry does not dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween civil­ians and com­bat­ants, but said Sat­ur­day that 70% of the dead were women and chil­dren. It said more than 40,000 peo­ple were wound­ed over the past two months.

With the end of the tem­po­rary truce, Is­rael has been urged by the Unit­ed States, its clos­est al­ly, to do more to pro­tect Pales­tin­ian civil­ians.

The ap­peal came af­ter a blis­ter­ing air and ground of­fen­sive in the first weeks of the war dev­as­tat­ed large ar­eas of north­ern Gaza, killing thou­sands of Pales­tini­ans and dis­plac­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands. Some 2 mil­lion Pales­tini­ans, al­most the en­tire pop­u­la­tion of Gaza, are now crammed in­to the ter­ri­to­ry’s south­ern half.

It was not clear if Is­rael’s mil­i­tary would heed ap­peals to spare civil­ians. The mil­i­tary said Sat­ur­day that it hit more than 400 Hamas tar­gets across Gaza over the past day, us­ing airstrikes and shelling from tanks and navy gun­ships. It in­clud­ed more than 50 strikes in the city of Khan You­nis and sur­round­ing ar­eas in the south­ern half of Gaza.

At least nine peo­ple, in­clud­ing three chil­dren, were killed in a strike on a house in Deir al-Bal­ah city in the south, ac­cord­ing to the hos­pi­tal where the bod­ies were tak­en. The hos­pi­tal al­so re­ceived sev­en bod­ies of oth­ers killed in overnight airstrikes, in­clud­ing two chil­dren.

In north­ern Gaza, an airstrike flat­tened a res­i­den­tial build­ing host­ing dis­placed fam­i­lies in the ur­ban refugee camp of Ja­baliya on the out­skirts of Gaza City. The strike on the mul­ti-sto­ry build­ing left dozens dead or wound­ed, said res­i­dents Hamza Obeid and Amal Rad­wan.

“There was a loud bang, then the build­ing turned in­to a pile of rub­ble,” Obeid said.

Mean­while, Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tant groups in Gaza said they fired a bar­rage of rock­ets on south­ern Is­rael. Sirens were heard in com­mu­ni­ties near the Gaza Strip but there were no im­me­di­ate re­ports of dam­age or in­juries.

In the clear­est sign yet that a re­turn to ne­go­ti­a­tions for fur­ther truces was un­like­ly, Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu di­rect­ed ne­go­tia­tors to re­turn to Is­rael.

With the re­sump­tion of fight­ing, the Is­raeli mil­i­tary pub­lished an on­line map carv­ing up the Gaza Strip in­to hun­dreds of num­bered parcels and asked res­i­dents to fa­mil­iar­ize them­selves with the num­ber of their lo­ca­tion ahead of evac­u­a­tion warn­ings.

On Sat­ur­day, the mil­i­tary used the map for the first time, list­ing more than two dozen par­cel num­bers in ar­eas around Gaza City in the north and east of Khan You­nis. Sep­a­rate­ly, the mil­i­tary dropped leaflets with evac­u­a­tion or­ders over towns east of Khan You­nis.

One res­i­dent in Khan You­nis said a neigh­bour re­ceived a call from the army warn­ing that hous­es in the area would be hit and every­one should leave. “We told them, ‘We have noth­ing here, why do you want to strike it?’” said the res­i­dent, Hik­mat al-Qidra. They even­tu­al­ly left, and al-Qidra said the house was de­stroyed.

The maps and leaflets gen­er­at­ed pan­ic and con­fu­sion, es­pe­cial­ly in the crowd­ed south. Un­able to go to north­ern Gaza or neigh­bour­ing Egypt, their on­ly es­cape is to move around with­in the 220-square-kilo­me­tre (85-square-mile) area.

“There is no place to go,” said Emad Ha­jar, who fled with his wife and three chil­dren from the north a month ago to Khan You­nis. “They ex­pelled us from the north, and now they are push­ing us to leave the south.”

Amal Rad­wan, who shel­tered in the ur­ban Ja­baliya refugee camp in north­ern Gaza, said she was not aware of such a map, adding that she and many oth­ers were not able to leave be­cause of the re­lent­less bom­bard­ment. “Here is death and there is death,” she said.

Is­rael says it is tar­get­ing Hamas op­er­a­tives and blames civil­ian ca­su­al­ties on the mil­i­tants, ac­cus­ing them of op­er­at­ing in res­i­den­tial neigh­bour­hoods. It claims to have killed thou­sands of mil­i­tants, with­out pro­vid­ing ev­i­dence. Is­rael says 77 of its sol­diers have been killed in the ground of­fen­sive in north­ern Gaza.

Al­so Sat­ur­day, the Pales­tin­ian Red Cres­cent said it had re­ceived aid trucks through the Rafah cross­ing, the first con­voy since fight­ing re­sumed. Wael Abu Omar, a spokesman for the Pales­tin­ian Cross­ings Au­thor­i­ty, said 50 trucks were sched­uled to en­ter Gaza but said there were no fu­el trucks among them.

“Cur­rent con­di­tions do not al­low for a mean­ing­ful hu­man­i­tar­i­an re­sponse, and I fear will spell dis­as­ter for the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion,” Pas­cal Hundt, in charge of op­er­a­tions in Gaza for the In­ter­na­tion­al Com­mit­tee of the Red Cross, said in a state­ment.

Mean­while, U.S. Vice Pres­i­dent Ka­mala Har­ris, who was in Dubai on Sat­ur­day for the COP28 cli­mate con­fer­ence, said in a meet­ing with Egypt­ian Pres­i­dent Ab­del Fat­tah Al-Sisi that “un­der no cir­cum­stances” would the Unit­ed States per­mit the forced re­lo­ca­tion of Pales­tini­ans from Gaza or the West Bank, the be­siege­ment of Gaza or the re­draw­ing of its bor­ders, ac­cord­ing to a U.S. sum­ma­ry of the meet­ing.

Har­ris was ex­pect­ed to out­line pro­pos­als with re­gion­al lead­ers to “put Pales­tin­ian voic­es at the cen­ter” of plan­ning the next steps for the Gaza Strip af­ter the con­flict, ac­cord­ing to the White House. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s ad­min­is­tra­tion has em­pha­sized the need for an even­tu­al two-state so­lu­tion, with Is­rael and a Pales­tin­ian state co­ex­ist­ing.

The Oct. 7 at­tack by Hamas and oth­er mil­i­tants killed about 1,200 peo­ple, most­ly civil­ians, in south­ern Is­rael and around 240 peo­ple were tak­en cap­tive.

The re­newed hos­til­i­ties have height­ened con­cerns for 136 hostages who, ac­cord­ing to the Is­raeli mil­i­tary, are still held by Hamas and oth­er mil­i­tants af­ter 105 were freed dur­ing the truce.

For fam­i­lies of re­main­ing hostages, the truce’s col­lapse was a blow to hopes their loved ones could be the next out. A 70-year-old woman held by Hamas was de­clared dead on Sat­ur­day, ac­cord­ing to her kib­butz, bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of known dead hostages to eight.

Dur­ing the truce, Is­rael freed 240 Pales­tini­ans from its pris­ons. Most of those re­leased from both sides were women and chil­dren.

Magdy re­port­ed from Cairo, Ris­ing from Bangkok. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Ju­lia Frankel in Jerusalem con­tributed to this re­port.

KHAN YOU­NIS, Gaza Strip (AP) —