Israel launched air strikes on the besieged Palestinian enclave of Gaza overnight, Hamas said Monday, as the Israeli army said it would not be distracted from the war after Iran’s retaliatory attack heightened fears of a broader conflict.

World powers have urged restraint after Iran late Saturday launched more than 300 drones and missiles at Israel, though the Israeli military has claimed the vast majority were intercepted.

Tehran’s first direct assault on Israel, in retaliation for a deadly strike in Damascus earlier this month, followed months of violence across the region involving Iranian-supported groups who say they act in support of Palestinians in the war-battered Gaza.

“Even while under attack from Iran, we have not lost sight, not for one moment, of our critical mission in Gaza to rescue our hostages from the hands of Iran’s proxy Hamas,” Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said late Sunday.

As mediators eye a deal to halt the fighting, fears grew over Israeli plans to send troops into Rafah. In this far-southern city, the majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have taken refuge.

“Hamas is still holding our hostages in Gaza,” Hagari said of the roughly 130 people, including 34 presumed dead, who Israel says remain in the hands of Palestinian resistance fighters.

“We also have hostages in Rafah, and we will do everything we can to bring them back home,” the military spokesman told a briefing.

The army said it was “calling up approximately two reserve brigades for operational activities on the Gazan front” about a week after withdrawing most ground troops from the territory.

The Hamas government media office said Israeli aircraft launched “dozens” of strikes overnight on central Gaza.

Rumours of a reopened Israeli checkpoint on the coastal road from the besieged territory’s south to Gaza City sent thousands of Palestinians heading north on Sunday, despite Israel denying it was open.