U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said too many innocent Palestinians had been killed in Gaza as Israeli war planes and artillery bombarded the enclave on Saturday following the collapse of a truce with Hamas militants.

Residents feared the barrages presaged an Israeli ground operation in the south of the Palestinian territory that would pen them into a shrinking area and possibly try to push them across into Egypt.

The Gaza health ministry said at least 193 Palestinians had been killed since the truce ended on Friday, adding to the more than 15,000 Palestinian dead since the start of the war. Israel has sworn to annihilate Hamas following its Oct. 7 rampage in southern Israel in which it says 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 taken hostage.

Speaking in Dubai, Harris said Israel had a right to defend itself, but international and humanitarian law must be respected and "too many innocent Palestinians have been killed."

"Frankly, the scale of civilian suffering, and the images and videos coming from Gaza, are devastating," Harris told reporters.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also weighed in on the need for Israel to protect Gaza civilians as a "moral responsibility" even as he said the U.S. would remain its closest friend. "The center of gravity is the civilian population," he said. "And if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was continuing to work in coordination with the U.S. and international organisations to define "safe areas" for Gaza civilians.

"This is important because we have no desire to harm the population," Netanyahu told a news conference in Tel Aviv. "We have a very strong desire to hurt Hamas."

Harris also sketched out a U.S. vision for post-conflict Gaza, saying the international community must support recovery and Palestinian security forces must be strengthened.

"We want to see a unified Gaza and West Bank under the Palestinian Authority, and Palestinian voices and aspirations must be at the center of this work," she said, adding that Hamas must no longer run Gaza.

The Western-backed Palestinian Authority governs parts of the occupied West Bank. Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007 from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' mainstream Fatah party and has ruled the enclave ever since.

Israel has vowed to wipe out Hamas once and for all. The Iranian-backed Islamist group is sworn to Israel’s destruction. One of its officials has said Hamas would repeat the Oct. 7 attacks if possible.

The Israeli military said it had killed Wessam Farhat, commander of a Hamas battalion who sent fighters to hit two kibbutzim near the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7. It also described him as one of the planners of the raid.

ISRAEL SEEKS 'SECURITY ENVELOPE'

Mark Regev, a senior adviser to Netanyahu, said Israel did not want to see Gaza's civilians caught in the crossfire.

"Israel is targeting Hamas, a brutal terrorist organization that has committed the most horrific violence against innocent civilians. Israel is making a maximum effort to safeguard Gaza's civilians," Regev said.

He said that when the war was over, Israel would seek a "security envelope" with special zones and arrangements to prevent Hamas from being positioned on its border.

Throughout Saturday morning, a steady stream of wounded people were carried into the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. Gaza health officials said 650 had been wounded since the truce collapsed.

The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross said the renewed fighting was intense.

"It's a new layer of destruction coming on top of massive, unparalleled destruction," Robert Mardini told Reuters in Dubai.

With conditions inside Gaza reaching "breaking point," in Mardini's words, the first aid trucks since the end of the truce entered from Egypt through the Rafah crossing, Egyptian security and Red Crescent sources said. Some 100 trucks passed through, carrying food, water and medical supplies, the sources said.

A senior official said Israel would facilitate the provision of humanitarian aid to Gaza's civilians.

The warring sides blamed each other for the collapse of the seven-day truce, during which Hamas had released hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

Israel said it had recalled a team from Qatar, host of indirect negotiations with Hamas, accusing the Palestinian faction of reneging on a deal to free all the women and children it was holding.

French President Emmanuel Macron meanwhile said he was heading to Qatar to work on a new truce.

The deputy head of Hamas, however, said no prisoners would be exchanged with Israel unless there is a ceasefire and all Palestinian detainees in Israel are released.

Saleh Al-Arouri told Al Jazeera TV that Israeli hostages held by Hamas are soldiers and civilian men who previously served in the army.

But Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Hamas breached its commitment to free 17 women and children still held in Gaza and insisted that the militant group must keep its word.

SOUTH TARGETED

The southern part of Gaza including Khan Younis and Rafah was pounded on Saturday. Residents said houses and a school had been hit and three mosques destroyed in Khan Younis. Columns of smoke rose into the sky.

Hamas said it targeted Tel Aviv with a rocket barrage. There were no reports of damage but paramedics said one man was treated for a shrapnel injury in central Israel.

Displaced Gazans have been sheltering in Khan Younis and Rafah because of fighting in the north, but residents said they feared Israeli troops were preparing to move south.

Palestinian witnesses said Israeli tanks had taken up positions near the road between Khan Younis and Deir Al-Balah.

Yamen, who gave only his first name, fled to Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza from the north after Israel destroyed several districts there.

"Where to after Deir Al-Balah, after Khan Younis? I don't know where I would take my wife and six children."

On Saturday morning, Israeli air strikes hit areas close to the Nasser Hospital six times, medics and witnesses said.

The hospital is filled with thousands of displaced and hundreds of wounded, including many of those who had been evacuated from north Gaza hospitals.

"A night of horror," said Samira, a mother of four. "It was one of the worst nights we spent in Khan Younis in the past six weeks since we arrived here ... We are so afraid they will enter Khan Younis."

They just want to go to class: These college students are stuck in the middle as the Israel-Hamas conflict spills onto campus.

Beyond Columbia University’s heavy iron gates emblazoned with the words “May All Who Enter Here Find Welcome and Peace,” 25-year-old graduate student Alessandro Prosperi said he felt immense pressure to “pick a side” in the Israel-Hamas war.

Prosperi, who is from Italy and working on a PhD in statistics, recalled being approached repeatedly by friends on both sides of the conflict and refusing to lend his name to petitions or statements on the emotionally fraught topic.

“I’m not an expert. I don’t have an opinion,” said Prosperi, president of the university’s Italian Society. “It’s not simple, and a lot of people are dying. My opinion is that it’s sad.”

Longtime bastions of political discourse and protest, US college campuses are seeing widening fissures created by the intense debate over a conflict that has sparked contention for decades. While students on both sides say they feel unheard and abandoned by the university’s administration, young people who won’t take a stand on the war argue those feelings are also true for them.

“You can either act like you don’t care and avoid whatever they say, or you can try to reason and understand what’s going on to see an ideological way of picking a side. But the situation is so involved,” said Prosperi, who moved to New York in August after studying in Texas.

“Either you don’t care or you feel lost. It’s too much to try to handle.”

‘I don’t even want to be involved on campus’

Entrenched opinions about the long-running conflict have not only resulted in disciplinary action against faculty members but also created a fierce backlash against more vocal students. As a result, many grads and undergrads nearing the end of one of the more tumultuous semesters in recent history agree the highly charged environment is impacting college life, turning a place of learning into a place of mistrust and disorder.

“I don’t even want to be involved on campus,” said a second-year Columbia Law student, who is Jewish and did not want to give his name, looking exhausted after recent pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus. “Now I want to graduate and get out of here.”

On a recent November afternoon, demonstrators gathered on both sides of Low Plaza, the heart of the Columbia campus in the Morningside Heights section of Manhattan. That day – and at other times this fall – school administrators closed the sprawling grounds to the public in part “to help maintain safety and a sense of community through planned demonstration activities,” according to a statement.

The words “Corner of Peace” – which had been scrawled in chalk above a bench on Campus Walk, the main artery across the university – had now been washed away.

With campus closed to the public that day, a university spokesperson escorted a reporter around, noting the war-related events were not sanctioned by Columbia and violated school policy.

On the steep granite steps leading from the vast esplanade to the portico around the entrance to Low Library, demonstrators chanted “Cease fire now” in a measured, restrained cadence.

A Palestinian refugee, Mohsen Mahdawi, delivered an impassioned speech about his experience getting shot in the leg at a refugee camp. Mohsen, an undergrad, later led demonstrators down the steps and around a group of Jewish students – who waved Israeli flags and refused to move – to stage a die-in.

“We’re not going to die under an Israeli flag,” he said, leading the demonstrators to hold their protest away from the flags.

At the top of the steps, a senior majoring in biology – “a reformed history student” – only gave his first name, Daniel. He is half Iranian. The tension on campus, he said, made him uncomfortable – a “mental discomfort.”

Daniel said he doesn’t have a problem speaking his mind. But he warned that “picking a side” can lead to getting one’s name and face displayed on a mobile billboard “doxxing truck” that a conservative nonprofit has used to shame pro-Palestine students. Daniel only shares his opinions with close friends and family, he said.

“Physical peace and ideological peace are two different things,” he said as the die-in was breaking up.

In October, university president Minouche Shafik addressed doxxing – an online invasion of personal privacy – in a statement.

“Some students, including at Columbia, have been victims of (doxxing),” Shafik said. “This form of online harassment, involving the public posting of names and personal information, has been used by extremists to target communities and individuals. This kind of behavior also will not be tolerated and should be reported through appropriate school channels. When applicable, we will refer these cases to external authorities.”

Columbia has created a resource group to deal with issues relating to doxxing, harassment and online security.

The university postponed its massive Giving Day fundraising event in October amid simmering tensions on campus over the Israel-Hamas war.

“Right now, we know that the atmosphere on campus is extremely charged and many are concerned for their personal safety,” Columbia officials said in a statement on October 12.

University leaders issued a separate statement condemning “disturbing antisemitic and Islamophobic acts, including intimidation and outright violence.”

That statement came after a Columbia student who was hanging up posters on campus in support of Israel was assaulted.

Shafik has urged the university community to avoid language that “vilifies, threatens or stereotypes entire groups of people,” adding this type of speech “will not be tolerated” when it is unlawful or violates university rules.

Outside Butler Hall, two undergrad Filipino American women and a male friend – all of whom asked to remain anonymous – said the campus is full of people talking about the war despite it not affecting them personally. One woman said the heated debate made it difficult to focus on school.

At a November sit-in at the Graduate School of Social Work, about 50 demonstrators accused the university of being one-sided and pro-Israel. One student held a bullhorn; another banged a drum.

The university’s senior executive vice president, Gerald Rosberg, showed up at one point. After about 20 minutes, he informed the students they were violating school rules and faced possible sanctions. The students didn’t leave.

“When someone doesn’t meet your demands, that doesn’t mean they’re not listening to you,” Rosberg said.

One demonstrator filmed everyone entering the building, forcing some students headed to class to take cover behind the front desk to avoid being recorded.

Rosberg, who chairs the special committee on campus safety, later issued a statement announcing the suspension of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) as official student groups through the end of the term.

Rosberg said the groups “repeatedly violated University policies related to holding campus events, culminating in an unauthorized event (November 9) that proceeded despite warnings and included threatening rhetoric and intimidation.”

In a statement on Instagram, the groups called the suspension “an attack on free speech.” The groups accused the university of “selective censorship of pro-Palestinian student organizations in order to prevent protest against Israel’s increasingly brutal attacks” and “silence our voices.”

Prosperi, the PhD student from Italy, said Americans are more concerned with not offending someone than voicing their opinions. The Israel-Palestine conflict, he said, makes it extremely difficult to connect with people because “everything you say can be misinterpreted and offend someone.”

As the fall semester draws to a close, Prosperi will avoid protests and study at home. He prefers superficial talk about the weather or lunch, he said, because when discussing politics “people will respond to you and will play the victim.”

“So people don’t talk,” he said.