The ongoing fighting between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas has now claimed more than 2,200 lives on both sides.

Tensions are escalating as the Israeli defense chief says his country will use every measure to eliminate its enemy.

Both sides have been exchanging aerial attacks since Hamas launched a surprise assault on Israel over the weekend.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has hinted at the possibility of a ground offensive.

Israel said Wednesday that military aid from the United States, including weapons and ammunition, arrived at a base in the country's south.

Israel has been blockading Gaza to ramp up pressure on Hamas, cutting off supplies of food, water, fuel and electricity.

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell says Israel should exercise its right to defend itself based on international humanitarian law.

Hamas launched thousands of rockets toward Israel on Saturday. As many as 1,000 Hamas militants infiltrated Israel around the same time, breaching walls and fences. The group used motorcycles, paragliders and boats.

Footage of a music festival shows what appear to be paragliders. Hamas fighters killed 260 people there and took soldiers and citizens as hostages.

An expert on the Middle East told NHK Hamas may have spent years preparing for such a large-scale operation. Suzuki Hiroyuki, project associate professor at the University of Tokyo, said it is unprecedented for so many fighters to infiltrate Israel at one time, and the attack took Israel by surprise.

Suzuki said Israel's military was focused on the West Bank, where there have been a series of clashes between Israelis and Palestinians this year.

At a press conference in Tokyo, Israeli Ambassador to Japan Gilad Cohen called for solidarity with his country. He says the genocide of Jews must never happen again.

Waleed Siam, representative of the Permanent General Mission of Palestine in Japan, also held a news conference in the Japanese capital. He demanded that what he called the enemy stop killing civilians.

Meanwhile, disinformation about the conflict is circulating online. A video posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, purportedly shows a Palestinian fighter downing an Israeli helicopter, but the clip is thought to be from a computer game.

A TikTok video claims to show Palestinian fighters parachuting into Israel, but a building in the footage is actually in Egypt.

A clip claiming to show Israeli children being kept in cages after they were kidnapped by Hamas has attracted millions of views. But it was actually posted before Saturday's attack.

A senior EU official has urged Elon Musk, the owner of X, to tackle the disinformation issue quickly.