The Israeli military bombarded dozens of sites in the Gaza Strip over the weekend as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to keep fighting in the territory, even as anguish over the Israeli military’s accidental killings of three hostages raised new questions about how his government is prosecuting the war.

The military said Sunday that it had struck 200 locations in Gaza over the previous 24 hours amid a mounting outcry over the civilian toll there and calls for restraint by three of Israel’s most important allies.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was flying to the Middle East on Sunday, the latest in a series of senior Biden administration officials to travel to the region, to press Israel to scale back its military campaign. And the foreign secretaries of Britain and Germany issued a joint call for a “sustainable” cease-fire, a change in tone from their previous voice of support for Israel.

Austin will meet this week with Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to discuss in detail when and how Israeli forces might carry out a new phase of fighting. American officials envision it as involving smaller groups of elite forces who would move in and out of population centers in Gaza, conducting more precise, intelligence-driven missions to find and kill Hamas leaders, rescue hostages and destroy tunnels, U.S. officials said.Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel’s military would “fight to the end.” He began a government meeting in Tel Aviv by reading from a letter that he said came from families of Israeli soldiers killed fighting in Gaza.

Caught in the middle are Gaza’s beleaguered and besieged 2.2 million people.

Humanitarian aid began to dribble into Gaza on Sunday morning through a second border crossing, part of a tattered supply chain that the United Nations says is inadequate to address the ceaseless hunger, cold and spread of disease in the territory.

Israeli authorities said Sunday evening that nearly 80 trucks passed through the crossing at Kerem Shalom, which the United States had pressured Israel to open. Previously aid was entering only from Egypt at the Rafah crossing.

Civilian deaths

Israel has received a cascade of criticism both for the humanitarian conditions in Gaza and the deaths of civilians there.

Pope Francis condemned an attack on the compound of the Catholic parish in Gaza, “where there are no terrorists, but families, children, people who are sick and have disabilities, and nuns.” A Palestinian woman and her daughter who were sheltering there were killed, and others were wounded, the pope said.

In addition, the French Foreign Ministry condemned the Israeli bombing of a residential building in Rafah that killed one of its staff members Wednesday.

The Washington Post reported Saturday that a contractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development was killed in an airstrike last month, spurring an internal protest in the agency.

The United Nations says 135 of its employees in Gaza have been killed.

And the Committee to Protect Journalists said over the weekend it was “deeply saddened” by the killing of Samer Abu Daqqa, an Al-Jazeera cameraman, in a drone strike in southern Gaza. His death brings the toll of media workers killed in the war to 64.

All told, Gaza health authorities say nearly 20,000 people have been killed in the territory since Oct. 7, when the Hamas-led raids into Israel killed 1,200 people.

As its soldiers battle street to street and building to building in Gaza, Israel says it is trying to limit civilian casualties. As of Sunday, 122 Israeli soldiers have died in ground operations in Gaza, the military said.

Support for hostages

Adding to the pressure on Netanyahu’s government is the internal anger over Friday’s mistaken killing of three Israeli hostages.

The letter Netanyahu read Sunday from families of soldiers killed in the war appeared at odds with the message coming from relatives of Israelis still held hostage in Gaza, many of whom have taken to the streets to demand a cease-fire.

Weekly rallies in support of the hostages have drawn thousands to the Israeli military’s main headquarters in Tel Aviv. The killing of the three hostages added a sense of urgency to Saturday night’s rally.

“We see the current approach is not working,” said Deborah Galili, a protester from Tel Aviv.

During a weeklong cease-fire between Israel and Hamas last month, 105 hostages were freed in exchange for the release of 240 Palestinians from Israeli jails; after negotiations broke down, the war resumed Dec. 1.

David Barnea, the head of Mossad, Israel’s spy service, met with Qatari officials Friday in Europe to discuss the possibility of a renewed pause in the fighting and further exchanges of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners.

U.S. shifts tone

Israel has been partly shielded from international pressure in recent weeks by the steadfast support from the United States, which this month cast the only “no” vote in the U.N. Security Council on a resolution calling for a cease-fire.

But Washington has shifted its public tone over the past week, with President Joe Biden criticizing what he said was “indiscriminate” bombing by the Israeli military and warning that Israel was losing support.

Austin’s visit, his second to Israel since the attacks of Oct. 7, is part of a ramped-up effort by the administration to urge Israel to wrap up the high-intensity part of the war. Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, met with Israeli leaders Thursday about the direction of the conflict. Sullivan did not specify a timetable, but U.S. officials said Biden wants Israel to switch to more precise tactics in about three weeks.

French call for truce

European leaders, for their part, are calling for varying permutations of a cease-fire.

The foreign minister of France, Catherine Colonna, who was in Israel on Sunday for talks with Israeli leaders, called for an “immediate truce” to facilitate the release of remaining hostages and to get more humanitarian aid into Gaza.

In a joint opinion article published in The Sunday Times of London, Britain’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, and the foreign minister of Germany, Annalena Baerbock, issued a more qualified call for a cease-fire. They argued, as has Biden, that calling for an immediate cease-fire would only benefit Hamas.

Netanyahu has so far rejected an immediate cease-fire and has opposed American calls for Gaza to be governed by a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority as a stage toward a two-state solution, which both the United States and the European Union support.

In a news conference Saturday night, Netanyahu said he was “proud” to have prevented the establishment of a Palestinian state in the past and described the Oslo Accords as “a fateful mistake.”