The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Sunday an Israeli air strike killed two journalists in the Palestinian territory.
Mustafa Thuria, a video stringer for AFP news agency, and another journalist Hamza Wael Dahdouh, were killed while they were travelling in a car, the ministry and medics said.
Top U.S and European diplomats sought ways on Sunday to keep the Gaza war from spreading further in the Middle East, but three months after the start of the conflict, more bloodshed underlined the difficulties they face.
Gun battles intensified in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis as well as in districts in the centre of the densely populated Palestinian enclave.
Smoke rose from the sites of Israeli bombing on Sunday morning east and north of Khan Younis. Israeli strikes on houses in Khan Younis killed 50 people, health officials in Nasser Hospital said on Sunday.
Outside Gaza, there was fresh violence in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli aircraft fired on Palestinian militants who had attacked troops in the West Bank, the military said, and Palestinian health officials said six Palestinians were killed in the strike.
An Israeli border police officer was killed and others wounded when their vehicle was hit by an explosive device during operations in the West Bank city of Jenin, the military and police said.
The West Bank had already seen its highest levels of unrest in decades during the 18 months before the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by the Hamas group that rules Gaza.
Confrontations in the West Bank have risen sharply since Israeli forces launched their retaliatory offensive on Gaza, laying waste to the strip as they seek to wipe out Hamas. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in clashes with Israeli soldiers and settlers over the past weeks in the West Bank and security forces have made thousands of arrests.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the European Union's top diplomat, Josep Borrell, were on separate trips to the region to try to quell spillover from the war into Lebanon, the West Bank and Red Sea shipping lanes.
"We have an intense focus on preventing this conflict from spreading," said Blinken, who was in Jordan on Sunday and will also travel to Israel, the West Bank, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt during his fourth trip to the region.
Jordan's King Abdullah urged Blinken to use Washington's influence over Israel to press it for an immediate ceasefire, a palace statement said, warning him of the "catastrophic repercussions" of Israel's continued military campaign.
Blinken, who visited Turkey and Greece at the start of his trio, will use the visits to press hesitant Muslim nations in the region to prepare to play a role in the reconstruction, governance and security of Gaza if and when Israel achieves its goal of eliminating Hamas, said a senior State Department official.
