Israeli air strikes targeted homes in southern Gaza, witnesses said on Friday, adding to what aid groups describe as an increasingly hopeless humanitarian situation despite efforts towards new truce talks.
Israeli media reported a delegation led by David Barnea, head of the Mossad intelligence agency, was heading to Paris for new truce discussions in the war with Hamas militants.
His trip follows what the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said was the death of more than 100 people over the previous day.
Israeli bombardment destroyed one house and left a gaping hole in the earth east of Rafah, on the border with Egypt, where about 1.4 million Gazans have converged in a futile search to escape the fighting.
"We were sleeping in our house when we heard the sound of a missile," said Abdul Hamid Abu el-Enein. "We rushed to the site and found people martyred and injured" in the strike which "completely erased" the two-storey home.
Witnesses reported several other houses targeted during the night, and an AFP reporter described heavy strikes in the city of Khan Yunis several kilometres (miles) to the north, as well as in Rafah itself.
Israel's military said fighting, including with drone strikes and sniper fire, continued in the western Khan Yunis area.
More than four months of fighting and bombardment have flattened much of Gaza and pushed its population of around 2.4 million to the brink of famine as disease spreads, according to the United Nations.
The UN humanitarian agency OCHA has blamed "limitations on the entry of aid" as well as the combat and growing insecurity for severely hampering assistance.
The war started after Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack which resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.
Hamas militants also took hostages, 130 of whom remain in Gaza including 30 presumed dead, according to Israel.
Hezbollah says 2 paramedics, fighter dead in Israeli strike on Lebanon
Two paramedics affiliated with Hezbollah and one of the group's fighters were killed in an Israeli strike on a south Lebanon border village, the group and a security source said Friday.
The Israeli army said late Thursday it had struck a Hezbollah "military compound" in south Lebanon's Blida village, amid near-daily cross-border fire between the arch foes since the Israel-Hamas war broke out on October 7.
The Hezbollah-affiliated Islamic Health Committee said two of its paramedics were killed in a "direct" Israeli attack on a civil defence centre in Blida, while Hezbollah also announced the death of one of its fighters.
The Islamic Health Committee said the attack caused "the destruction of the health centre as well as a number of ambulances".
The Lebanese security source, requesting anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media, said a strike on Thursday in Blida "targeted the Islamic Health Committee centre", adding that three people were killed.
The violence on Israel's northern border has sparked fears of another full-blown war between Israel and Hezbollah like that of 2006.
The Israeli army said it had identified fighters "entering a Hezbollah military compound in the area of Blida", adding that "fighter jets were scrambled and struck the compound".
In retaliation, Hezbollah said it launched a drone attack on northern Israel on Friday, after also announcing rocket fire the night before.
Lebanon's health ministry condemned the "direct" attack on a civilian health centre, and called on the international community to hold Israel to account for its "dangerous violations".
Since October, at least 276 people have been killed on the Lebanese side, most of them Hezbollah fighters but also including 44 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
On the Israeli side, 10 soldiers and six civilians have been killed, according to the Israeli army.
Last month, Hezbollah said an Israeli strike killed two affiliated medics in south Lebanon's Hanin, calling it a "blatant attack".
Hezbollah, which says it is acting in support of its ally Hamas, on Thursday fired rockets at Israel after two of its fighters were killed, later identifying one of them as a "commander".
The security source said one of the two killed in the Israeli strike in south Lebanon's Kfar Rumman was involved in the movement's "rocket capabilities".
- 'Appalled' -
Israel's retaliatory campaign, aiming to destroy Hamas, has killed at least 29,514 people, mostly women and children, according to the latest count by Gaza's health ministry.
The toll has seen pressure grow on the administration of US President Joe Biden to rein in its ally Israel -- which it provides with billions of dollars in military aid.
On Tuesday, Washington for a third time vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
The vote came as Israel threatens to move troops into Rafah, a plan which has sparked widespread international alarm.
The head of the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) charity, Christopher Lockyear, told the Council he was "appalled" by Washington's willingness "to obstruct efforts to adopt the most evident of resolutions. One demanding an immediate and sustained ceasefire."
The United States ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said she could not support a resolution that "put sensitive negotiations" in jeopardy.
Brett McGurk, White House coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, held talks this week with Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant in Tel Aviv, after meeting with other mediators in Cairo.
Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh was in the Egyptian capital for truce talks earlier in the week, the group said.
Washington's National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told journalists that so far the discussions were "going well".
Israeli media reported on Friday that Barnea would be joined by Ronen Bar, chief of the Shin Bet domestic security agency, for the talks in Paris.
Barnea and his US counterpart from the CIA helped broker a week-long truce in November that saw the release of 80 Israeli hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
Benny Gantz, a member of Israel's war cabinet, this week spoke of "the first signs that indicate the possibility of progress" toward a new hostage release deal.
- 'Die hungry' -
At Rafah's Najjar hospital on Friday, mourners grieved over two dead children whose faces poked through white shrouds.
Mahmud Jarghun said he had no hope in the negotiations because "the intention is to annihilate the Palestinian people".
"I want to die hungry," he said, so "God will hold them accountable for what we are suffering from."
Fierce gun battles occurred in the neighbouring Zeitun district, where tanks were deployed, according to witnesses.
The army said helicopters were in action to support "targeted raids" in the area.
"I fear we are on the edge of a monumental disaster with grave implications for regional peace, security and human rights," said Philippe Lazzarini, head of the main aid agency in Gaza, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).
In a letter to the United Nations General Assembly, he said UNRWA "has reached a breaking point", as donors freeze funding, Israel exerts pressure to dismantle the agency and humanitarian needs soar.
UNRWA employs around 30,000 people in the occupied territories, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
Several leading donors have suspended funding to UNRWA in response to Israeli allegations that some of its staff participated in the October 7 attack on Israel.
The UN fired the employees accused by Israel and has begun an internal probe of UNRWA, but Lazzarini said Israel has provided no evidence against the 12 it accuses.
The head of OCHA, Martin Griffiths, joined the chiefs of almost 20 other UN and external aid groups in an appeal Wednesday for "an immediate ceasefire," restoration of UNRWA funding, and other measures "so that we can provide, at the very least, the bare essentials" including drinking water and food.
Under a post-war plan for Gaza proposed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, UNRWA would be dismantled, according to The Times of Israel newspaper.
The plan envisages Gaza's civil affairs being run by local Palestinian officials without links to Hamas or its foreign backers. It also rejects "unilateral recognition" of a Palestinian state, the report said.
With Arab support, the United States has called for a pathway to a Palestinian state in an effort to ensure peace.