Israeli air strikes kill 33 more Palestinians

Israeli air strikes on Sunday killed 33 Palestinians, including eight children, Gaza health officials said, as militants fired an early morning barrage of rockets into Israel, report agencies.

With no sign of an end to the worst outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian violence in years the United Nations Security Council was due to meet later on Sunday to discuss the hostilities.

The Arab League, Saudi Arabia and Turkey Tuesday condemned deadly Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip

The death toll in Gaza overnight jumped to 181, including 47 children, amid an intensive Israeli air and artillery barrage since the fighting erupted last Monday. Ten people have been killed in Israel, including two children.

The pre-dawn attacks were on houses in the centre of Gaza City, Palestinian health officials said. A spokesman for the Israeli military said he would look into these reports.

Palestinians working to clear rubble from a building wrecked in the air strikes recovered the bodies of a woman and man.

The Israeli military said that Hamas, the Islamist group that runs Gaza, and other armed groups have fired more than 2,800 rockets from the enclave in six days.

This was more than half the number fired during 51 days in a 2014 war between Hamas and Israel, the military said, and more intensive even than Hezbollah's bombardment from Lebanon during the 2006 war between Israel and the Iran-backed Shi'ite group.

Many of the rockets have been intercepted by an Israeli anti-missile system while some have fallen short of the border.

Israel's security cabinet met on Sunday to discuss the next steps, amid diplomatic efforts to restore calm.

There has been a flurry of US diplomacy in recent days to try to quell the violence, but with little sign of success.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reminded all sides on Saturday that "that any indiscriminate targeting of civilian and media structures violates international law and must be avoided at all costs," U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.

President Joe Biden's envoy, Hady Amr, arrived in Israel on Friday for talks. Biden spoke with both Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas late on Saturday, the White House said.

Report from Cairo adds: The Arab League on Tuesday condemned deadly Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip and called on the international community to move urgently to stop escalating violence that it blamed on Israeli actions against Palestinians in Jerusalem.

In a statement before the Arab League's meeting, its chairman Ahmed Aboul Gheit said: "Israeli violations in Jerusalem, and the government's tolerance of Jewish extremists hostile to Palestinians and Arabs, is what led to the ignition of the situation in this dangerous way."

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister on Sunday condemned Israel's "flagrant violations" of Palestinian rights and called on the international community to act urgently to put an end to military operations.

Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud was speaking in televised remarks at the start of an emergency virtual meeting of the 57-member Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).