The United Nations warned of a looming "unprecedented avalanche of human suffering" inside the Gaza Strip, following weeks of relentless bombing by Israel, while the General Assembly pushed for an "immediate humanitarian truce".

Israeli ground forces made limited ground incursions on Wednesday and Thursday nights.

Indonesia has called on the UN General Assembly to set up an independent commission to investigate what its top diplomat described as a “crime against humanity” in the Gaza Strip.

The ministry acted after US President Joe Biden and the Israeli military questioned the casualty figures issued by authorities in Gaza, which is controlled by the Islamist Hamas movement.

Indonesia has stood firm in its clarion call for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, which is currently besieged and blockaded by Israel, as the international response is thwarted by the “selective moral policing” of the West.

The rival powers went ahead and put forward texts doomed to defeat despite what diplomats said was a last-ditch effort led by France to delay a vote and work toward consensus.

Nearly three weeks after Hamas militants shocked Israel with an attack on southern Israeli towns in a rampage that killed 1,400 mostly civilians, world leaders sought to prevent the conflict from spreading.

"France is ready for the international coalition against Daesh in which we are taking part for operations in Iraq and Syria to also fight against Hamas," Macron told reporters alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem.

"We call for an unimpeded and continuous flow of humanitarian assistance and medical assistance to continue coming into Gaza," said Tamara Alrifai, spokesperson for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

Israel has been bombing Gaza since Hamas gunmen poured across its border with the Palestinian territory on October 7 and, according to Israeli officials, killed more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians.

Rafah is the main route in and out of the Gaza Strip that is not controlled by Israel, and the focus of efforts to deliver relief to Gaza's 2.3 million residents.

Judith Tai Raanan, 59, and her daughter Natalie, 17, were handed over to Israeli forces at the Gaza Strip border on Friday, becoming the first captives whose release by Hamas has been confirmed by both sides since the latest round of Arab-Israeli bloodshed erupted.

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas after the Islamist militant group launched a massive attack from the Gaza Strip on October 7, killing at least 1,400 people, mostly civilians who were shot, mutilated or burned to death, according to Israeli officials.

"China is willing to enhance cooperation with Egypt... and inject more certainty and stability into the region and the world," Xi told Mostafa Madbouli at a meeting in Beijing, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

Arab countries blamed Israel, which has rained bombs on Gaza since the bloody October 7 attack by Hamas, and protests erupted in Muslim countries from Egypt to Pakistan while Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah vowed a "day of rage".

Indonesia urges the international community, especially the United Nations' Security Council, to immediately take concrete steps to stop attacks and acts of violence in Gaza following a strike on a hospital in the war-torn area.

Biden's trip to the Middle East was supposed to calm the region, even as he demonstrated US support for its ally Israel, which has vowed to annihilate the Hamas movement whose fighters killed 1,300 Israelis in a rampage on Oct. 7.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the deployment would allow the United States "to respond more quickly" to the crisis, while the White House stressed it did not intend to put US combat forces on the ground.

Biden's visit will mark a significant show of U.S. support for its top Middle East ally after Hamas gunmen killed 1,300 people during a rampage through southern Israeli towns on Oct. 7, the deadliest single day in Israel's 75-year history.

Taliban officials and ministers have at times travelled to regional meetings, mostly those focussed on Afghanistan, but the Belt and Road Forum is among the highest-profile multilateral summits it has been invited to attend.

Israel, seeking vengeance for an attack by Hamas on October 7, has declared war on the militant group, launching a relentless bombing campaign and warning more than a million people in northern Gaza to move south ahead of the operation.

Hamas launched a large-scale attack on Israel on October 7 which killed 1,300 people, sparking a retaliatory bombing campaign that has killed at least 2,215 in the Gaza Strip ahead of a potential Israeli ground invasion of the territory.

At least 1,900 Gazans -- most of them civilians and including more than 600 children -- have been killed in waves of missile strikes on the densely populated enclave.

Any incoming assistance or evacuation effort will only be possible through a humanitarian corridor because of Gaza's ever-volatile conditions, according to the Foreign Ministry.

Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian spoke as Hamas and Israel traded heavy fire for a seventh day, after hundreds of Hamas gunmen stormed across the border from Gaza into Israel on Saturday and killed 1,200 people.

During a campaign speech in Florida, Trump also falsely accused the Biden administration of bankrolling the Hamas assault as a result of a prisoner exchange deal with Iran, which has historically funded Hamas and Hezbollah.

Explosions from air strikes echo every few minutes - killing more than 1,500 people in Gaza so far including hundreds of children, local health authorities say.

The UN said the mass relocation of the entire population in northern Gaza to the south of the enclave was "impossible" and urgently appealed for the order to be rescinded.

"Mass displacement across the Gaza Strip continues," the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said in a statement sent on Thursday.

Donors need to step up their funding to precipitate more relevant and accessible innovation in health and development, practitioners said on the second day of the 2023 Grand Challenges Annual Meeting.