Algeria will present a draft United Nations resolution calling for an end to "the killing" in Rafah, its ambassador has said, after an emergency Security Council meeting requested by his country.
Defying pressure from the United States and other western countries, Israel has been conducting military operations in the southern city, which is packed with people who have fled fighting elsewhere in Gaza.
An Israeli strike on Sunday killed 45 people at a camp for displaced people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, drawing a chorus of international condemnation.
A civil defence official in Gaza said that at least 21 people died in an Israeli strike on a displacement camp west of Rafah today.
Algerian Ambassador to the UN Amar Bendjama said the resolution would "be a short text, a decisive text, to stop the killing in Rafah".
He did not say when he hoped the measure might be put to a vote.
"We hope that it could be done as quickly as possible because life is in the balance," said Chinese Ambassador Fu Cong, expressing hope for a decision this week.
"It's high time for this council to take action. This is a matter of life and death. This is a matter of emergency," French Ambassador Nicolas de Riviere said before the council meeting.
The UN Security Council has struggled to find a unified voice since the war broke out with the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel, followed by Israel's retaliatory campaign.
After passing two resolutions centered on the need for humanitarian aid to people in Gaza, in March the council passed a text calling for an immediate ceasefire - an appeal that had been blocked several times before by the US, Israel's main ally.
The United States, increasingly frustrated with how Israel is waging the war and its mounting civilian death toll, finally allowed that resolution to pass by abstaining from voting.
But the government said that Israel's offensive in Rafah had not amounted to the type of full-scale operation that would breach President Joe Biden's "red lines" and it had no plans to change its policy toward Israel.
Asked about the Algerian draft resolution, US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said: "We're waiting to see it and then we'll react to it."
Gaza officials said that four tank shells hit a cluster of tents in Al-Mawasi today, a coastal area that Israel had advised civilians in Rafah to move to for safety, killing at least 21 people.
The Israeli military denied conducting a strike in Al-Mawasi.
"Contrary to the reports from the last few hours, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) did not strike in the Humanitarian Area in Al-Mawasi," it said in a statement.
In central Rafah, tanks and armoured vehicles mounted with machine guns were spotted near Al-Awda mosque, according to witnesses.
The Israeli military said its forces continue to operate in the area, without commenting on reported advances into the city centre.
Meanwhile, the US military has suspended aid deliveries into Gaza by sea, the Department of Defense said, after its temporary pier was damaged by bad weather.
"The rebuilding and repairing of the pier will take at least over a week," Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters.
"Upon completion of the pier repair and reassembly, the intention is to reanchor the temporary pier to the coast of Gaza and resume humanitarian aid to the people who need it most."
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In a diplomatic move purportedly aimed at reining in the violence, Ireland Spain and Norway officially recognised a Palestinian state.
The three countries said they hope their decision will accelerate efforts towards securing a ceasefire in Israel's war against Hamas militants, now in its eighth month, that has reduced much of the densely populated territory to rubble.
Residents said Rafah's Tel Al-Sultan neighbourhood, the scene of Sunday's night-time strike in which tents and shelters were set ablaze as families settled down to sleep, was still being bombarded.
"Tank shells are falling everywhere in Tel Al-Sultan. Many families have fled their houses in western Rafah under fire throughout the night," one resident said.
Around one million people - many repeatedly displaced by shifting waves of the war - have fled the Israeli offensive in Rafah since early May, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) reported.
A video obtained by Reuters showed families on the move again, carrying their belongings through Rafah's streets, their children trailing behind them.
"There are a lot of attacks, smoke and dust. It is death from God ...The (Israelis) are hitting everywhere. We're tired," Moayad Fusaifas said, pushing along belongings on two bicycles.
Since Israel launched its incursion by seizing control of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt three weeks ago, tanks had probed around the outskirts and entered some eastern districts but had not yet rumbled into the city in full force.
In recent days, Israeli tanks have advanced towards western neighbourhoods and taken up positions on the Zurub hilltop in western Rafah.
Witnesses reported gunbattles between Israeli troops and Hamas-led fighters in the Zurub area.
Witnesses in central Rafah said the Israeli military appeared to have brought in remote-operated armoured vehicles and there was no immediate sign of personnel in or around them.
An Israeli military spokesperson had no immediate comment.
The Israeli military said it operated overnight along the Philadelphi Corridor that separates Gaza from Egypt "based on intelligence indicating the presence of terror targets".
Israeli troops were engaged in close-quarter combat and were locating tunnel shafts, weapons and militant infrastructure, it said in a statement.
Israel has kept up attacks despite the ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Friday ordering it to stop given a high risk of civilian casualties.
Israel has argued that the top UN court's decision had left it some scope for military action there.
The ICJ also reiterated calls for the immediate and unconditional release of hostages held in Gaza by Hamas.
More than 36,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's offensive, Gaza's health ministry says.
Israel launched its air and ground war after Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israeli communities on 7 October, killing around 1,200 people and seizing more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel said it wants to root out Hamas fighters hiding in Rafah and rescue hostages it says are being held in the area.
In Jabalia in the northern Gaza, one of the largest of the enclave's eight historic refugee camps, Israeli forces have been engaged in fighting with Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters, residents said.
In some residential districts from which Israeli forces have retreated, civil emergency teams said they were recovering bodies from the ruins.
Biden under pressure to scale back support for Israel
US President Joe Biden is facing increasing pressure from within his own party to scale back support for Israel.
Prominent democrat in the House of Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called yesterday's strike on Rafah "an indefensible atrocity", adding in a social media post that "it is long past time for the president to live up to his word and suspend military aid."
Representative Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American serving in Congress, called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a "genocidal maniac".
A spokesperson said the US government was "actively engaging" with the Israeli military and others on the ground to assess what happened.
Mr Netanyahu said the strike was not intended to cause civilian casualties, but went "tragically wrong."
"In Rafah, we already evacuated about one million non-combatant residents and despite our utmost effort not to harm non-combatants, something unfortunately went tragically wrong," he said in a speech in parliament that was interrupted by shouting from opposition politicians.
Survivors said families were preparing to sleep when the strike hit the Tel Al-Sultan neighbourhood where thousands were sheltering after Israeli forces began a ground offensive in the east of Rafah over two weeks ago.
"We were praying ... and we were getting our children's beds ready to sleep. There was nothing unusual, then we heard a very loud noise, and fire erupted around us," said one woman.
"All the children started screaming ... The sound was terrifying; we felt like the metal was about to collapse on us, and shrapnel fell into the rooms."
Video footage obtained by Reuters showed a fire raging in the darkness and people screaming in panic. A group of young men tried to haul away sheets of corrugated iron and a hose from a single fire truck began to douse the flames.
More than half of the dead were women, children, and elderly people, health officials in Hamas-run Gaza said, adding that the death toll was likely to rise from people with severe burns.
Israel's military said the strike, based on "precise intelligence", had eliminated Hamas' chief of staff for the second and larger Palestinian territory, the West Bank, plus another official behind deadly attacks on Israelis.
That followed the interception of eight rockets fired towards Israel from the Rafah area in Gaza's southern tip.
