At least 13 people, including children, were killed in Israeli attacks on two homes in Rafah, medical sources said.
Israeli forces killed at least 27 Palestinians in tank and aircraft attacks across Gaza, as tanks advanced further northwest of Rafah, near the border with Egypt.
Relentless Israeli attacks in the enclave continued Friday, even as a parallel conflict in the Lebanon-Israel border area involving Hamas-allied Hezbollah intensified.
In the southern city of Rafah, at least 13 Palestinians, including three children, were killed in Israeli airstrikes on two residential properties in the Mesbah area, medical sources told Tel Aviv Tribune.
Tel Aviv Tribune’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, said both properties were completely destroyed in the attack.
“Civil protection teams are scrambling to reach the scene of the attack as fighting between Hamas and Israel rages in the area,” he said.
“There are still people buried under the rubble.”
Tanks continued to advance northwest of Rafah, supported by aircraft, residents told Reuters news agency.
Heavy gunfire and explosions rang out in eastern areas of the city, where Israeli forces detonated several houses, according to residents and Hamas media.
“Our fighters are engaged in fierce fighting against Israeli forces, which have advanced into the Tanour neighborhood of Rafah,” Hamas’s military wing said in a statement.
Separately, Palestinian health officials said Israeli tank shelling killed eight people and wounded several others in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, and six others were killed in an airstrike on a house in Gaza City.
In the northern town of Beit Hanoon, an Israeli attack on a car killed and wounded several Palestinians, medics said.
The Israeli military said forces operating in Rafah have killed hundreds of Palestinian fighters, located tunnels and explosives and destroyed military infrastructure in recent weeks.
The United States and mediators from Qatar and Egypt have been trying for months to broker a truce between Israel and Hamas, but have failed to reach a final agreement.
Two obstacles have been particularly difficult to overcome: Israel’s demand to maintain forces in the Philadelphia Corridor between Gaza and Egypt, and the details of an exchange of Israeli captives for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Israel’s latest war on Gaza began after October 7, when Hamas fighters entered Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 prisoners, according to Israeli counts.
Since then, Israel has relentlessly attacked the enclave, killing more than 41,000 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry, while displacing nearly the entire population of 2.3 million, sparking a hunger crisis and giving rise to allegations of genocide at the International Court of Justice, which Israel has denied.