Smoke plumes billow during Israeli air strikes in Gaza City on Thursday. AFP

The Israeli government is under intense public pressure on Thursday to topple Hamas after its militants stormed through a border fence on Saturday and killed hundreds of Israelis in their homes, on the streets and at an outdoor music festival.

Hamas said it launched its attack on Saturday because Palestinians’ suffering had become intolerable under a 16-year-long blockade in Gaza, as well as an unending Israeli military occupation and increasing settlements in the West Bank.

Hamas in Gaza are holding an estimated 150 people taken hostage from Israel and have fired thousands of rockets into Israel over the past five days. In the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, residents are facing ever-growing uncertainty after the territory's only power plant ran out of fuel and shut down on Wednesday.

The US announced it is working with Egypt and Israel to open up safe corridors to get civilians out of Gaza.

The war, which has claimed more than 2,400 lives on both sides, is expected to escalate.

Israel's military indicated on Thursday that it would not publish the number of interceptions of Palestinian rockets that it has carried out in the Gaza war, citing concern that such information would help Hamas.

Palestinians remove a dead body from the rubble of a building after an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip. AP

"I'm not going to tell the enemy the number of our intercepts," spokesperson Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Hecht told reporters, outlining what appeared to be a departure from past wartime policy.

Meanwhile, the death toll in the Gaza Strip has risen to 1,200 people, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said on Thursday, following an increase in Israeli bombardments on the sixth day since Hamas's surprise attack.

"The number of martyrs has risen to around 1,200, and the number of wounded to around 5,600," a spokesperson for the health ministry in Gaza said.

Agencies