Israeli military chief opposes Gaza expansion

• Netanyahu plans to discuss strategy with ministers
• 20 more Palestinians killed by overturned aid truck
• Only 84 aid trucks entered Gaza on Tuesday amid crisis

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faced pushback from the head of the military over his proposal to seize remaining areas of Gaza it doesn't already control during a tense three-hour meeting, three Israeli officials said.

Eyal Zamir, the military chief of staff, warned the prime minister that taking the rest of Gaza could trap the military in the territory, which it withdrew from two decades ago, and could lead to harm to the hostages being held there, the sources briefed on the Tuesday meeting said.

The Israeli military says it already controls 75 percent of Gaza after nearly two years of offensive. Netanyahu, who favours an expansion of military operations, told Zamir that so far the military had failed to bring about the release of the hostages, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The prime minister is scheduled to discuss military plans for Gaza with other ministers today.

A top UN official has warned that expanding Israeli military operations inside Gaza would risk "catastrophic consequences".

A widening of the war "would risk catastrophic consequences for millions of Palestinians and could further endanger the lives of the remaining hostages in Gaza," Miroslav Jenca, UN assistant secretary-general for Europe, Central Asia and the Americas, told a Security Council meeting on Tuesday.

"There is no military solution to the conflict in Gaza or the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict," Jenca said.

In the ground, Israeli forces killed at least 31 Palestinians, including 10 aid seekers, across the Palestinian enclave since dawn yesterday, with one of the attacks targeting a United Nations clinic sheltering displaced people in Gaza City.

Gaza's civil defence agency said that 20 more people were killed when an aid truck overturned on a crowd of aid seekers in the central Gaza Strip, reports AFP.

The incident took place near the Nuseirat refugee camp, as the truck was driving on an unsafe road that Israel had previously bombed.