IMAGE COPYRIGHT REUTERS image caption Excavators worked to clear rubble in Gaza City after the new air strikes
Forty-two people have died in the latest Israeli air strikes on Gaza, as the conflict with Palestinian militants entered its seventh day.
Gaza health officials said 16 women and 10 children were among the dead.
Israel’s military said it had been targeting leaders and infrastructure linked to Hamas, the militant group that runs Gaza.
Hamas launched a new barrage of rockets towards southern Israel on Sunday afternoon.
Meanwhile, a UN Security Council meeting has begun, with international mediators hoping to broker a ceasefire.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres opened the meeting by describing the violence as “utterly appalling” and said the fighting must stop immediately.
Since it began on Monday at least 188 people have been killed in Gaza, including 55 children and 33 women, with 1,230 injured, according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry. Israel says dozens of militants are among the dead.
Ten people, including two children, have been killed by militant attacks on Israel, Israeli officials say.
IMAGE COPYRIGHT REUTERSThe Israeli air strikes – the deadliest attack in the conflict so far – hit a busy street just after midnight on Sunday.
Palestinian rescue workers have been working through the rubble of at least three destroyed buildings, pulling out bodies and searching for survivors.
IMAGE COPYRIGHT REUTERS“I have never covered air strikes with such intensity, explosions are everywhere in Gaza, there are difficulties in communicating with officials to find out where the strikes are,” said the BBC’s Rushdi Abualouf in Gaza.
“The building in which I live in [the] western part of the city shook like an earthquake,” he wrote on Twitter. “A hysterical state of chaos, children and women in the building that houses more than 200 people screaming.”
Israel’s military said it struck the homes of both Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and his brother Muhammad Sinwar, whom it described as head of logistics and manpower for the movement.
IMAGE COPYRIGHT REUTERSBoth residences had, it said, “served as military infrastructure” for Hamas.
Local sources confirmed to media that the Hamas leader’s home in the Gaza town of Khan Younis had been bombed. There were no immediate reports about the fate of the two brothers.
It was unlikely they were at home at the time of the strikes, according to the Associated Press news agency.
Shortly after noon, rockets were launched by militants in Gaza against Ashkelon, Ashdod, Netivot and other parts of central and southern Israel, according to Israeli media. There were no reports of casualties.
IMAGE COPYRIGHT REUTERSThe country’s Iron Dome defence system has intercepted many of them.
The Israeli military said it had seen the highest ever concentration of rocket attacks on its territory during the past week.
On Sunday evening, Israeli police said there had been a car-ramming incident in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem.
An Israeli police spokesman said the driver had been shot dead and four Israeli officers injured.
The threat to evict Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrah to make way for Israeli settlers sparked the current round of violence between Israel and the Palestinians.
Those tensions culminated in clashes at a holy site revered by both Muslims and Jews. On Monday, Hamas began firing rockets after warning Israel to withdraw from the site, triggering retaliatory air strikes.
How likely is a ceasefire?
By Paul Adams, BBC diplomatic correspondent
Is Israel’s military operation in Gaza, dubbed “Guardian of the Walls”, nearing its conclusion?
Not obviously. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attacks are continuing with “full force” and will “take time”.
In a news conference on Sunday, he admitted there were “pressures” but thanked US President Joe Biden, in particular, for his support.
Mr Biden’s envoy, Hady Amr, has been in Israel since Friday, discussing the crisis with Israeli officials.
Unusually, at the end of a week that has also seen an alarming spate of intercommunal violence in mixed Jewish-Arab cities, he also met Israeli Arab leaders.
Since the US, like Israel and many other countries, regards Hamas as a terrorist organisation, Mr Amr will not be meeting one of the two warring parties.
Any messages for Hamas will have to go through traditional interlocutors, such as Egypt or Qatar.
Local reports suggest Hamas has been offering some kind of ceasefire for several days, only to be rebuffed by Israel, which clearly wants to inflict as much damage as it can on the militants before the fighting is finally brought to a close.
These episodes follow a familiar pattern: Israel presses home its undoubted military advantage until the international outcry over civilian casualties, and a deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, demand that the operation end.
In Israel’s estimation, we have not reached that point yet.
Timeline: How the violence escalated
The worst violence in years between Israel and the Palestinian territory of the Gaza Strip has seen dozens killed. It follows a month of spiralling tensions before open conflict broke out. Here is what happened in the lead-up to the fighting.
Clashes erupt in East Jerusalem between Palestinians and Israeli police.
Palestinians are angry over barriers which had been placed outside the Damascus Gate entrance to the Jerusalem‘s Old City preventing them from gathering there after prayers at the Old City’s al-Aqsa Mosque on what is the first night of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
Palestinian discontent had been stoked earlier in the day when President Mahmoud Abbas called off planned elections, implicitly blaming Israel over voting arrangements for Palestinians in East Jerusalem.
Hamas – Mr Abbas’ Islamist rivals who control Gaza and were running in the elections – react angrily to the postponement.
Violence around Damascus Gate and elsewhere in East Jerusalem continues nightly.
Rockets are fired from Gaza at Israel, which responds with air strikes after a relative period of calm between Israel and the Palestinian enclave.
Clashes spread to the mixed Arab-Jewish port city of Jaffa, next to Tel Aviv.
In Jerusalem, Jewish youths, angry over a spate of filmed assaults by Palestinians on Orthodox Jews posted on the TikTok video-sharing app, attack Arabs and chant anti-Arab slogans.
Hundreds of ultra-nationalist Jews shouting “Death to Arabs” march towards Damascus Gate in protest at the Arab assaults on Jews. Clashes erupt at the site between Palestinians and police trying to separate the two groups, injuring dozens of people.
Violence between Arabs and Jews spreads to other parts of the city.
Militants fire dozens of rockets at Israel from Gaza, drawing retaliatory air strikes.
President Abbas’ Fatah faction and Hamas condemn the looming threatened eviction of Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah district of East Jerusalem by Jewish settlers ahead of a planned court hearing. Hamas calls on Arabs to form “human shields of resistance” there.
In the days that follow, police and protesters repeatedly clash at the site as it becomes a focal point for Palestinian anger.
Militants in Gaza begin sending incendiary balloons into Israel over successive days, causing dozens of fires.
Two Palestinian gunmen are shot dead and a third is wounded after opening fire on Israeli security forces in the northern West Bank. Israeli authorities say the group planned to carry out a “major attack” in Israel.
Later on after Friday prayers – the last of Ramadan – major clashes erupt at the al-Aqsa mosque compound, injuring more than 200 people. Israel’s police force says it used “riot dispersal means”, firing rubber bullets and stun grenades after officers came under a hail of stones and bottles.
A second night of violence erupts in East Jerusalem after tens of thousands of worshippers prayed at the al-Aqsa mosque for Laylat al-Qadr, the holiest night of Ramadan.
Police and protesters clash at Damascus Gate, with police using water cannon, rubber bullets and tear gas against crowds of Palestinians, some throwing stones.
More than 120 Palestinians and some 17 police are injured.
Israel’s Supreme Court postpones the hearing on the Sheikh Jarrah case following calls to delay it because of the growing unrest. Tensions remain high though and more clashes take place between Israeli police and Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah and at Damascus Gate.
Early morning clashes break out between police and Palestinians at the al-Aqsa mosque compound, where crowds throw stones and officers fire stun grenades.
Palestinian anger has been inflamed by an annual Jerusalem Day march planned for later in the day by hundreds of Israeli nationalists to celebrate Israel’s capture of East Jerusalem in 1967.
The march is due to pass through predominantly Arab parts of the Old City in what is seen by Palestinians as a deliberate provocation. It is rerouted at the 11th hour, but the atmosphere remains volatile with more than 300 Palestinians and some 21 police injured in the violence at the holy site.
Hamas issues an ultimatum to Israel to “withdraw its soldiers… from the blessed al-Aqsa mosque and Sheikh Jarrah” by 18:00. When the deadline passes without an Israeli response, rockets are fired towards Jerusalem for the first time in years.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the group has “crossed a red line” and Israel retaliates with air strikes, killing three Hamas fighters.
A continuing exchange of rocket-fire and air strikes quickly escalates into the fiercest hostilities between the two sides since they fought a war in 2014.
