JERUSALEM: Israel bombed Gaza as the United Nations warned the Palestinian territory has become "uninhabitable" after three months of fighting, which threatens to engulf the wider region.
AFP correspondents reported Israeli strikes early Saturday on Gaza's southern city of Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of people have sought shelter from the fighting.
Civilians continue to bear the brunt of the conflict, with the UN warning of a deepening humanitarian crisis as famine looms and disease spreads.
With much of the territory already reduced to rubble, UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said on Friday that "Gaza has simply become uninhabitable".
The UN's children's agency warned that clashes, malnutrition, and a lack of health services had created "a deadly cycle that threatens over 1.1 million children" in Gaza.
Israeli forces were continuing "to fight in all parts of the Gaza Strip, in the north, centre and south", military spokesman Daniel Hagari said late Friday.
Hagari said Israeli forces were maintaining a "very high state of readiness" near the border with Lebanon following the killing of a top Hamas commander in a strike in Beirut.
Israel has not claimed responsibility for the strike, but a US defence official told AFP that Israel carried it out.
The Israeli army said its forces had "struck over 100 targets" across Gaza over the previous 24 hours, including military positions, rocket launch sites, and weapons depots.
"We fled Jabalia camp to Maan (in Khan Yunis) and now we are fleeing from Maan to Rafah," said one woman who declined to give her name. "(We have) no water, no electricity and no food."
The Palestinian Red Crescent reported renewed shelling and drone fire in the area around Al-Amal hospital in Khan Yunis after seven displaced people, including a five-day-old baby, were killed while sheltering in the compound. --AFP