Israel said Monday its forces carried out new attacks against Hamas militants in central and southern Gaza, as well as airstrikes against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

The attacks came as Israeli officials prepared for a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who said he would raise the issues of Israel doing more to prevent civilian casualties from its Gaza operations and of facilitating humanitarian aid deliveries to Palestinian civilians.

Blinken has also expressed concerns about the conflict spreading in the region.

“This is a conflict that could easily metastasize, causing even more insecurity and even more suffering,” Blinken said Sunday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue fighting as he spoke to a weekly Cabinet meeting Sunday.

“The war must not be stopped until we achieve all the goals: the elimination of Hamas, the return of all our hostages and ensuring that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel,” he said at the start of a weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday. “I say this to both our enemies and our friends.”

The Israeli campaign has left vast parts of the Gaza Strip in ruins. The health ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said the Israeli offensive has killed more than 22,800 people. The ministry does not differentiate between militants and civilians but says 70% of those killed were women and children.

Israel began its military campaign to wipe out Hamas after Hamas fighters crossed into southern Israel on Oct. 7. Israel said 1,200 people were killed and some 240 captives taken in the terror attack, with 129 believed still held by Hamas or other militants in Gaza.

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees says nearly 1.9 million of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people are sheltering in or in the vicinity of the agency’s sites in Gaza.

As of Sunday, 79 journalists had been killed, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The organization said the dead included 72 Palestinians, four Israelis and three Lebanese journalists.

“CPJ emphasizes that journalists are civilians doing important work during times of crisis and must not be targeted by warring parties,” Sherif Mansour, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa program coordinator, said in a statement.

Al Jazeera has condemned the death of two journalists, one of them a freelancer for the network, whom authorities in Hamas-run Gaza say were killed in an Israeli airstrike while traveling in their car covering the war near Rafah.

Mustafa Thuria was a video stringer for Agence France-Presse.

Hamza Al-Dahdouh was Al Jazeera’s stringer and the son of the TV network’s bureau chief in Gaza, Wael Al-Dahdouh. A third freelancer, Hazem Rajab, was wounded in the strike.

Earlier in the war, Wael Al-Dahdouh lost his wife, two other children and a grandson — and was nearly killed himself.

The Qatar-based Al Jazeera network said in a statement the latest killings demonstrate “without a doubt the Israeli forces’ determination to continue these brutal attacks against journalists and their families, aiming to discourage them from performing their mission, violating the principles of freedom of the press.”

Al Jazeera urged “the International Criminal Court, governments, human rights organizations and the United Nations to hold Israel accountable for its heinous crimes” and demanded “an end to the targeting and killing of journalists.”

Israel’s military has not commented on the strike but in a statement on Dec. 16, responding to the death of another Al Jazeera journalist in Gaza, the army said, “The IDF has never, and will never, deliberately target journalists.”

Some material for this report was provided by The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.