Authorities are trying to confirm the safety of thousands of Australians in the Middle East, amid concerns about how to get them out as the conflict escalates.

The safety of Australians in the Middle East remains the federal government’s top priority as the war between Israel and Palestine escalates.

About 900 people are dead and thousands more wounded after the Islamist group Hamas attacked Israeli towns on Saturday in a continuation of a 75-year-long Arab-Israel conflict.

At least a further 400 were killed in Israel’s retaliatory attacks and Hamas is now threatening to execute hostages if the strikes continue.

There are unconfirmed reports of an Australian hostage. Defence Minister Richard Marles would not provide more detail but he confirmed there were no Australian casualties at this stage.

“We will be pretty reticent about talking about any individual cases,” he told Seven’s Sunrise program on Tuesday.

About 10,000 Australians live in Israel and many more are tourists.

“So right now we are in the process of trying to assess the wellbeing of all of those Australians,” Mr Marles said.

There are also concerns about how to get Australians out of the country as the conflict escalates with commercial flights becoming limited. 

The Australian government continued to monitor the flight situation but Tel Aviv airport remained open, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said there were concerns about wider conflict in the region and the safety of Australians in the Middle East.

“The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade are working on a 24-hour basis to keep on top of the situation,” he told Adelaide radio 5AA.

The “horrific scenes” needed unequivocal condemnation, Mr Albanese said after the Palestinian community raised concerns about their plight and rallied after the attack.

“This just provides for the murder of innocent civilians that does nothing to advance a political cause.”

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said the attack “should be properly condemned by every decent human being”.

“This was an act of terrorism and treachery,” he told reporters in Adelaide.

“This is not a rudimentary incursion across a border… these people were driven into the desert and slaughtered.”

The prime minister needed to urgently convene the national security committee of cabinet to determine the impacts the attack could have in Australia and for the Jewish and Israeli communities, the opposition leader said.

“What happens if, as Hamas is threatening at the moment, there are beheadings or some of the hostages are killed? What ramification will that have here?” Mr Dutton said.

“The prime minister should be giving assurances to the Jewish community that everything is possible is being done to protect … places where people of Jewish faith might gather.” 

Senator Wong urged restraint to ensure the protection of civilians.

“Australia should always, in any conflict, be saying we want civilian lives to be protected,” she told ABC radio.

But she didn’t weigh in on what restraint should be exercised by Tel Aviv when it came to collective punishment after it announced it was cutting off food, water, electricity and gas from Gaza.

“It’s always very difficult from over here to make judgments about what security approach other countries take,” she said.

“We’ve said Israel has the right to defend itself.”

Palestinian political analyst Nour Odeh said cutting aid and punishing an entire community who did not carry out the attack was “political posturing of the most sinister kind”.

“Ordinary Palestinians are … certainly not deserving of being further punished on top of the miserable reality that they live in,” she told ABC radio.

The way to end the conflict was to address the root causes instead of bombing a civilian population as Palestinians “do not want to be ruled by a foreign military”, the Ramallah-based analyst said.

Australia Palestine Advocacy Network president Nasser Mashni said he couldn’t condone violence, but questioned why Palestinian voices were only heard when Israel was attacked but not when 250 of his people were killed this year.

“No building has been ever lit up in the Palestinian flag,” he told ABC TV.

“All we want is what everybody else wants … we want to live freely.”