The stepped-up attacks, and the rapidly rising death toll in Gaza, came as Hamas released two elderly Israeli women who were among the hundreds of captives it captured from southern Israel.

Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been running out of food, water and medicine since Israel sealed off the territory. A third small aid convoy entered Gaza on Monday carrying only a tiny fraction of the cargo aid groups say is necessary.

With Israel still barring the entry of fuel, the United Nations said aid distribution would soon grind to a halt when it can no longer fuel trucks inside Gaza. Hospitals overwhelmed by the wounded are struggling to keep generators running to power lifesaving medical equipment and incubators for premature babies.

The two freed captives, 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz and 79-year-old Nurit Cooper, were taken out of Gaza at the Rafah crossing into Egypt, where they were put into ambulances, according to footage shown on Egyptian TV. The women, along with their husbands, were taken from their homes in the kibbutz of Nir Oz near the Gaza border. Their husbands were not released.

On Monday, Hamas released a video showing the handover, with militants giving drinks and snacks to the women, and holding their hands as they are walked to Red Cross officials. Just before the video ends, Lifshitz reaches back to shake one militant’s hand.

Around the same time, Israel’s internal security service, Shin Bet, released a recording showing Hamas prisoners — most in clean prison uniforms, but one in a bloody t-shirt and at least one wincing in pain — sitting handcuffed in drab offices talking about the Oct. 7 attack.  About 1,400 people in Israel were dead in the fighting.

More than 5,000 Palestinians, including some 2,000 children and around 1,100 women, have been killed by Israel since, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. That includes the toll from an explosion at a hospital last week. The toll has climbed rapidly in recent days, with the ministry reporting 436 additional deaths in just the last 24 hours.

On Tuesday, Israel said it had launched 400 airstrikes over the past day, killing Hamas commanders. The previous day, Israel reported 320 strikes. The Palestinian official news agency, WAFA, said many of the airstrikes hit residential buildings, some of them in southern Gaza where Israel had told civilians to take shelter, causing many casualties and trapping people under rubble.

Fifteen members of the same family were among at least 33 Palestinians buried Monday in a shallow, sandy mass grave at a Gaza hospital after being killed in Israeli airstrikes.

Men discussed where to fit the shrouded corpse of a small child.

The U.S. has told Hezbollah in Lebanon and other groups not to join the fight. Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire almost daily across the Israel-Lebanon border, and Israeli warplanes have struck Syria, Lebanon and the occupied West Bank in recent days.

US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said there has been an uptick in rocket and drone attacks by militias on U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria, and the U.S. was “deeply concerned about the possibility for any significant escalation” in the coming days.

He said U.S. officials were having “active conversations” with Israeli counterparts about the potential ramifications of escalated military action.

The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that the Biden administration is preparing for the possibility that hundreds of thousands of American citizens will require evacuation from the Middle East if the bloodshed in Gaza cannot be contained, according to four officials familiar with the U.S. government’s contingency planning.

At least 1.4 million Palestinians in Gaza have fled their homes, and nearly 580,000 of them are sheltering in U.N.-run schools and shelters, the U.N. said Monday.