JERUSALEM/BAGHDAD - Israel is examining a plan to use siege tactics against Hamas in northern Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quoted by several Israeli media outlets as saying on Sunday.

Netanyahu's office did not respond to a request for comment. The reports cited unnamed sources at a closed parliament committee meeting.

The plan, published by retired military commanders and floated by some parliament members this month, suggests Palestinian civilians would be instructed to evacuate northern Gaza, which would then be declared a closed military zone.

An estimated 5,000 Hamas militants remaining there would then be put under siege until they surrender. Army Radio reported that Netanyahu told lawmakers at parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that it was being examined.

Public broadcaster Kan quoted Netanyahu as saying that the blueprint "makes sense" and that "it is one of the plans being considered but there are others as well."

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Israel has faced fierce international criticism for the humanitarian crisis brought on by its nearly one-year offensive against the Hamas militant group in Gaza.

Most of Gaza's population has been displaced. An estimated one million people - half the population - are currently crammed into a designated humanitarian zone that makes up less than 15 percent of the territory and is lacking essential infrastructure and services, according to the United Nations.

Humanitarian access to northern Gaza, where estimates of the population run between 300,000 and 500,000 people - is especially difficult, according to the United Nations.

The war was sparked when Hamas-led militants burst into Israel on Oct 7, killing 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and taking another 250 hostage into Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.

More than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive since, according to the Gaza health ministry. Gaza health officials say most are civilians.

Israel, which has lost 346 soldiers in Gaza, says at least a third of the Palestinian fatalities are fighters.

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Also on Sunday, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a Shi'ite militia group, claimed responsibility for a drone attack on an Israeli target in the Jordan Valley, which forms Jordan's western border with Israel and the West Bank.

The group said in a statement that the attack, the fifth of its kind on Sunday, was carried out "in solidarity with the people of the Gaza Strip," pledging to continue targeting "the enemy's strongholds."

It did not specify the affected sites or report any casualties.

Earlier in the day, the group claimed responsibility for multiple drone and missile attacks on Israeli targets, including a drone attack on sites in southern Israel at dawn, attacks with upgraded al-Arqab cruise missiles at several sites in the north, and a drone attack on an Israeli military base in the Jordan Valley in the morning.

Since the onset of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza on Oct 7, 2023, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq has conducted multiple attacks on Israeli and US targets in the region in support of Palestinians in Gaza.