Deadly strikes hit Rafah ahead of truce push

Deadly strikes were reported early Saturday in the overcrowded Gaza border town of Rafah -- dubbed a "pressure cooker of despair" by the UN -- as international mediators readied a new push to seal a tentative truce deal between Israel and Hamas.

Hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have fled south to Rafah since the outbreak of the war, with the former city of 200,000 now housing more than half of Gaza's two million-plus population, a WHO representative said Friday.

The United Nations' humanitarian agency OCHA said it was deeply concerned about the escalation of hostilities in nearby Khan Yunis, which have pushed more and more people south in recent days.

"Most are living in makeshift structures, tents, or out in the open," OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke said during a briefing in Geneva. "Rafah is a pressure cooker of despair, and we fear for what comes next."

An AFP journalist in the city heard powerful explosions shortly after midnight on Saturday, with the Hamas-run health ministry later reporting that 14 people were killed in two strikes there.

The ministry said more than 100 people in total were killed across the territory overnight. Abdulkarim Misbah, one of the many people seeking refuge in Rafah, said he had first left his home in the northern Jabalia refugee camp for Khan Yunis, only to be uprooted again.

"We escaped last week from death in Khan Yunis, without bringing anything with us. We didn't find a place to stay. We slept on the streets the first two nights. The women and children slept in a mosque," the 32-year-old father said.

The family later received a donated tent, setting it up beside the Egyptian border.

"My four children are shivering from the cold. They feel sick and unwell all the time," he said.

Winter storms and torrential rain lashed Gaza on Friday, with some people wearing hazmat suits left over from the Covid pandemic as protection against the harsh weather.

The UN children's agency UNICEF said Friday that an estimated 17,000 children in Gaza had been left unaccompanied or separated from their parents due to the war. "Each one has a heartbreaking story of loss and grief," said spokesman Jonathan Crickx.