Some displaced Palestinian families in Gaza's Rafah fled the city this morning, as more than a million civilians crammed into a southern corner of the Palestinian enclave wait in fear for an Israeli assault.
Amid growing international concern over the plight of civilians, Israeli tanks shelled the eastern sector of Rafah city overnight, residents said, although the anticipated ground offensive did not appear to have started.
The Israeli military said its forces killed dozens of Palestinian fighters in clashes in the southern and central Gaza Strip over the last 24 hours, including 30 in Khan Younis, a city close to Rafah on the coastal enclave's border with Egypt.
Israeli forces ordered displaced people in some shelters to head to Rafah. But the boom of tank shelling east of Rafah caused waves of panic inside the makeshift tent camps housing the displaced.
With the Israel-Hamas war now in its fifth month, attention is focused on the situation in Rafah. Around half of Gaza's 2.3 million people are now living there in desperate conditions, including many who fled other areas pulverized in Israel's offensive.
