Israel has said it would allow a limited amount of humanitarian aid into Gaza even as its “extensive” new ground operations are underway there. But despite the announcement, no aid had gone in by mid-afternoon Monday.

Aid trucks that were briefly parked on the Israeli side of a border crossing turned back and drove off into Israel. The developments come after a nearly three-month blockade and warnings by global experts of impeding famine.

Gaza's civil defense agency said Israeli attacks on Monday killed at least 52 people, as the military pressed a newly intensified campaign in the war-ravaged territory.

"The Israeli bombardment on Gaza has continued since midnight and throughout the early morning hours, resulting in 52 martyrs," civil defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal told AFP, adding that the bombing was ongoing in the afternoon and that Israeli forces had "expanded their ground operation".

The head of the World Health Organization said Monday that two million people were starving in the Gaza Strip while tons of food was being blocked at the border.

"Two million people are starving" while "tons of food is blocked at the border, just minutes away," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told opening of the World Health Assembly in Geneva, adding: "The risk of famine in Gaza is increasing with the deliberate withholding of humanitarian aid."

Israeli forces will "take control of all" of the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday, as his military pressed a newly expanded offensive in the territory.

"The fighting is intense and we are making progress. We will take control of all the territory of the Strip," he said in a video posted to his Telegram channel. "We will not give up. But in order to succeed, we must act in a way that cannot be stopped."

Israel has retrieved thousands of items belonging to the country's most famous spy after a covert operation in Syria.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shared some of the 2,500 items from the Syrian archive relating to Eli Cohen, an Israeli spy who infiltrated the political echelon in Syria, with Cohen's widow. Sunday marked 60 years since Cohen was hanged in a square in Damascus.

Iraq's Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, whose country hosted an Arab League summit, said Baghdad would provide $40 million for the reconstruction of Lebanon and Gaza after wars with Israel.

Gaza's civil defense agency said Israeli air strikes on Sunday killed at least 33 people, more than half of them children, a day after Israel announced an expanded military campaign in the besieged territory.

Arab leaders meeting at a summit in Baghdad urged the international community to press for a Gaza ceasefire, as Israel launched an expanded military offensive in the Palestinian territory.

The Arab League is meeting in Baghdad on Saturday to discuss Gaza and other regional crises, but some key leaders are expected to miss the talks that come straight after U.S. President Donald Trump's Gulf tour.

Gaza rescuers said Israeli strikes killed 10 people on Saturday, after the Israeli military announced the early stages of an intensified operation aimed at defeating Hamas.