The government in Gaza said Friday an Israeli strike hit a convoy of ambulances, which the health ministry said killed multiple people near the territory's largest hospital.

A government statement said Israeli forces targeted "a convoy of ambulances which was transporting the wounded", while the health ministry said several people were killed in the strike near Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel Friday to press the Israeli government on its ongoing offensive in Gaza amid growing international condemnation and a steadily mounting civilian death toll.

The top U.S. diplomat, who traveled twice to Israel last month in the wake of the deadly Hamas attack, is meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the war cabinet in Tel Aviv as the U.S. government continues to attempt balancing support for Israel’s defense with an increasingly public call for them to protect civilians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ruled out a temporary cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, saying he will press ahead with a devastating military offensive until hostages held by the Hamas militant group are released.

Netanyahu spoke Friday shortly after meeting U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who pressed Israel for a temporary pause in its offensive in order to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza. Blinken also urged Israel to do more to protect civilians from its attacks.

In large-scale raids in the occupied West Bank overnight, Israeli forces killed seven Palestinians and arrested scores more, Israeli military officials and Palestinian health officials said.

Israeli forces killed three in Jenin, two in Hebron, one in Nablus and one in Qalandiya, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a coalition of Iran-backed Iraqi militias, announced Friday that it will launch a more “intense and expansive” phase of operations against U.S. bases in the region starting next week.

It said the escalation is “in support of our people in Palestine and to avenge the martyrs” in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

The gray film covering the faces of children rushed to Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza Thursday made it hard to distinguish between the living and the dead.

After two Israeli airstrikes flattened an entire block of apartment buildings in the Bureij refugee camp and damaged two U.N. schools-turned-shelters, rubble-covered Palestinians big and small arrived at a hospital too packed to take them.

The House has approved a nearly $14.5 billion military aid package for Israel, a muscular U.S. response to the war with Hamas but also a partisan approach by new Speaker Mike Johnson that poses a direct challenge to Democrats and President Joe Biden.

In a departure from norms, Johnson's package required that the emergency aid be offset with cuts in government spending elsewhere. That tack established the new House GOP's conservative leadership, but it also turned what would typically be a bipartisan vote into one dividing Democrats and Republicans. Biden has said he would veto the bill, which was approved 226-196, with 12 Democrats joining most Republicans on a largely party-line vote.

Israeli ground troops encircled Gaza City on Friday in their war against Hamas, as top U.S. diplomat Antony Blinken arrived in Israel for a trip focused on "concrete steps" to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties.

Ahead of Blinken's arrival, Israel's military said on Thursday it had "completed the encirclement" of the narrow Palestinian territory's largest city -- signalling a new phase in the nearly month-long conflict.

Israel's military said Thursday its forces have surrounded the Hamas stronghold of Gaza City after a day that saw the Palestinian territory pounded by deadly fire.

The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, warned Israel its invading soldiers would go home "in black bags".

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday he would work to avoid escalation of the Israel-Hamas war after Yemen's Huthi rebels and Lebanon's Hezbollah, both backed by Iran, fired on Israel.