Trucks carrying aid have arrived in southern Gaza, the first convoy of humanitarian supplies since Israel began a devastating siege 12 days ago and after further heavy Israeli bombardment overnight that killed dozens of Palestinians.

US President Joe Biden had said this week that agreement had been reached for 20 aid trucks to cross through Gaza’s Rafah border point with Egypt, and added on Friday he believed those first trucks would pass through within 48 hours.

Witnesses said aid trucks exited the crossing on Saturday after checks and proceeded into Gaza’s southern area including the major towns of Rafah and Khan Younis where hundreds of thousands of people displaced by Israel’s unrelenting air war are sheltering.

However, Palestinian officials were disappointed that fuel supplies were not included and added that the relief was only three per cent of what used to get into Gaza in terms of medical and humanitarian aid before the crisis.

“Excluding the fuel from the humanitarian aid means the lives of patients and injured will remain at risk. Gaza hospitals are running out of the basic requirements to pursue medical interventions,” the Gaza health ministry said.

The UN has described the aid as a “drop in the ocean” of what’s needed, BBC reported.

Israel’s “total siege” of Gaza after the October 7 cross-border attack on southern Israel by militants of the Islamist movement Hamas has left Gaza’s its 2.3 million people running out of food, water, medicines and fuel.

The United Nations said the convoy included life-saving supplies that would be received and distributed by the Palestinian Red Crescent, with Hamas’ consent.

Israel has warned that no aid should end up in Hamas hands.

Strikes continue

Israel kept up heavy bombardment of targets throughout Gaza in Saturday’s early hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to “fight until victory” following the release of the first two hostages by Hamas.

Hamas on Friday freed US citizens Judith Tai Raanan, 59, and her daughter Natalie, 17, who were among around 210 kidnapped in the assault on southern Israel by Hamas this month.

Hamas said it acted in part “for humanitarian reasons” in response to Qatari mediation.

Hamas gunmen seized the hostages when they burst out of the blockaded enclave into Israel and killed 1400 people, mainly civilians, in a shock rampage, the deadliest single attack on Israelis since the country’s founding 75 years ago.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Saturday Israel’s air and missile strikes had killed at least 4385 Palestinians, including hundreds of children, while more than a million of the besieged territory’s 2.3 million people have been displaced.

Overnight Israeli fighter jets struck a “large number of Hamas terror targets throughout” Gaza including command centres and combat positions inside multi-storey buildings, the military said.

Gaza’s health ministry and Hamas media said Israeli aircraft had overnight targeted several family houses across Gaza, one of the world’s most densely populated places, killing at least 50 people and injuring dozens.

Hamas said it fired rockets towards Israeli’s biggest city Tel Aviv on Saturday in response to those deaths.

The Israeli military reported a fresh salvo of rockets from Gaza against southern Israeli border communities before dawn.

The Israeli military said on Saturday that the aid entering Gaza would go only to southern areas where it has urged Palestinian civilians to congregate “as we continue to intensify strikes” in the north of the enclave.

Terrified Palestinians who were forced to leave their homes after Israel’s deadly overnight bombings lashed out at the reports of aid trucks about to enter Gaza, saying it was a ceasefire and not food that they needed.

Most of Gaza’s inhabitants depend on humanitarian aid.

The heavily urbanised coastal strip has been under Israeli and Egyptian blockade since Hamas seized control of it 16 years ago, two years after Israeli ended a 38-year occupation.

Before the outbreak of conflict, an average of about 450 aid trucks were arriving daily in Gaza.

Egypt opened a summit on the Gaza crisis on Saturday to try to head off a wider regional war but assembled Middle Eastern and European leaders were expected to struggle to agree a common position on the Israel-Hamas conflagration.

100,000 protesters at UK march

About 100,000 people have joined a pro-Palestinian demonstration in central London, marching through the United Kingdom capital to demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza following the Hamas attack on Israel two weeks ago.

Chanting “Free Palestine,” holding banners and waving Palestinian flags, the protesters moved through London before massing at Downing Street, the official residence and office of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

Police estimated 100,000 people had taken part in the “National March for Palestine” demonstration, organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

“As a Palestinian who’d like to return home one day, as a Palestinian who has brothers and sisters in Gaza, and family, I wish we can do more but protest is what we can do at the minute,” one woman, who declined to giver her name, told Reuters.

Many of the chants and banners contained strong anti-Israeli slogans, and one protester held a banner with pictures of Sunak, US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with the message “Wanted For War Crimes”.

Police had cautioned before the march that anyone showing support for Hamas, banned as a terrorist organisation in the UK, would face arrest and any incident of hate crime would not be tolerated.

The protest appeared peaceful and there were no immediate reports of any arrests.

Figures on Friday showed there had been a 1353 per cent increase in anti-semitic offences this month compared to the same period last year while Islamophobic offences were up 140 per cent.

“This has been an issue which has long stimulated passions and we are now all seeing on social media and in our communities, how divisive and polarising the current situation has become,” UK foreign minister James Cleverly said at a peace summit in Cairo.

—with AAP