Israel launches pre-dawn strikes on Gaza as conflict rages on

Israel launched pre-dawn airstrikes on targets in Gaza City on Monday hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that actions would continue until a "heavy price" was inflicted on Hamas.

In a televised address, Netanyahu said the "full-force" Israeli attack against Hamas would "take time".

The Israeli military said it destroyed 15 kilometres of militant tunnels and the homes of nine Hamas commanders in the early morning barrage. No reports on casualties were immediately available.

It came after the conflict's deadliest day in Gaza, as Israeli strikes on Sunday destroyed three buildings and killed at least 42 people on Sunday.

The Gaza Health Ministry said at least 16 women and 10 children were among those killed, with another 50 people wounded in the attack and dozens pulled from the rubble.

The airstrike at about 1 am on Sunday hit a busy downtown street filled with residential buildings and shops that the IDF said contained a weapons warehouse and the home of the main Hamas leader still in Gaza, Yehiyeh Sinwar, who is thought to have gone into hiding.

In the space of about five minutes two buildings next to each other, and one about 50 metres further down the road, was destroyed.

Hamas also continued to launch rockets from civilian areas in Gaza toward civilian areas in Israel on Sunday. One rocket slammed into a synagogue in the southern city of Ashkelon hours before evening services for the Jewish holiday of Shavuot

A separate strike announced by the IDF reduced a building that housed media organisations including the Associated Press and Al-Jazeera to rubble.

Since fighting broke out over the eviction of Palestinians from East Jerusalem, at least 188 Palestinians are known to have been killed in Gaza, including 52 children and 31 women. Eight Israelis have been killed by some of the 3,100 rockets launched by Hamas, among them a soldier and a five-year-old boy.

Amnesty International has sounded the alarm over possible war crimes being committed in the Gaza Strip, including the apparent targeting of civilians and a media building, and called on the International Criminal Court to investigate.

"We are deeply concerned about the mounting death toll," the human rights organisation said in a tweet on Sunday, adding: "Direct attacks on civilians are war crimes.”

The strikes on Monday morning heavily damaged a three-story building in Gaza City, but residents said the military warned them 10 minutes before the strike, and the building was cleared.

They said many of the airstrikes hit nearby farmland.

Gaza’s mayor, Yahya Sarraj, told Al-Jazeera TV that the strikes had caused extensive damage to roads and other infrastructure. “If the aggression continues we expect conditions to become worse,” he said.

Israel said it struck nine houses in different parts of northern Gaza that belonged to “high-ranking commanders” in Hamas, the Islamic militant group that has controlled the territory since seizing power from rival Palestinian forces in 2007.

Israel is thought to have stepped up air raids in recent days to inflict as much damage as possible on Hamas while international mediators are trying to broker a ceasefire.

An American diplomat is in the region to try to de-escalate tensions, and the U.N. Security Council was set to meet on Sunday.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has called on the Council to seek an early de-escalation and in a phone conversation with Pakistan's Foreign Minister, blamed the US for UN inaction to date.

Also on Sunday, the 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Cooperation held an emergency meeting to discuss how to address the conflict in the first major move by Islamic countries to present a unified front.

The Saudi-based group issued a joint statement condemning "barbaric attacks" by Israel "in the strongest terms" and warned against what it termed a "continued and deliberate inflammation and provocation of the religious sensibilities and feelings of the Palestinian people and the Islamic Ummah [community]".

Member states also called on Israel to respect Muslims' access to Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam, as well as stop settlers from forcibly evicting Palestinian families from their homes, and called again for a two-state solution to the wider conflict with East Jerusalem as Palestine's capital.

Reactions to the fighting have been mixed across the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa and the Gulf states. In Qatar, a speech by Hamas’ top leader Ismail Haniyeh was broadcast on Saturday. Haniyeh now splits his time between Turkey and Qatar, both of which back Hamas.

“The resistance will not give in,” Haniyeh said in the speech, adding that “resistance is the shortest road to Jerusalem” and that Palestinians will not accept anything less than a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.