Hundreds of Palestinian foreign passport holders waited on Tuesday inside the war-stricken and besieged Gaza Strip to escape through the Rafah crossing with Egypt.

A woman shows her passport as Palestinian dual nationals and foreigners wait to cross the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, in the southern Gaza Strip.

While most still queued nervously, the first arrivals were seen on the Egyptian side where paramedics transferred an injured woman on a stretcher into an ambulance to rush her to a hospital.

Tuesday was set to mark the fifth day on which Gaza's sole land crossing not controlled by Israel has opened in the past week, to wounded Palestinians as well as foreigners and Palestinian dual nationals.

AFP video footage from the Gaza side showed hundreds waiting with suitcases, bags and other scant belongings at the Rafah terminal complex.

"We were suffering just like any Gazan resident, we waited a long time for the crossing to open," said Farid Nawasra, who holds a Russian passport.

"We were waiting every day for our names to be added to the list, and we hope today that they allow us to pass, as they allowed other foreigners to pass."

Departures from the Gaza Strip were expected to resume for many more on Tuesday afternoon after 500 people had received authorisation to enter Egypt, Hamas officials said.

"Every person in Gaza is in danger," said Myrian Abu Shaban, a resident of Gaza City. "I'm happy that we managed to make it to the border."

Israeli forces have stepped up their ground offensive in Gaza as part of the military response to the October 7 Hamas attacks that officials say killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians, with more than 240 taken hostage.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said Tuesday that 10,328 Palestinians had been killed in the territory since the start of Israel's offensive, most of them civilians.

Israel says it tries to minimise civilian casualties and accuses Hamas of using non-combatants as human shields while embedding in homes, schools and hospitals.

Israel's defence ministry body in charge of civil affairs in the Gaza Strip, COGAT, released a video that claimed to show thousands of Palestinians heading south from the northern Gaza Strip along a humanitarian corridor.

Hamas claimed the video footage was staged "in a humiliating way to demonstrate that a large number are fleeing south".

Israeli forces have encircled Gaza City where they say Hamas's main command and control facilities are located. The Israeli military has repeatedly called on Palestinian civilians to evacuate and move south.

Ibrahim, Yosra and their two young children are now waiting in Egypt.

British Gaza evacuees have three days to leave Egypt.

British people and other foreign nationals who have fled Gaza only have 72 hours - three days - in Egypt before they need to leave.

Hundreds of foreign nationals were evacuated from Gaza into Egypt through the Rafah Crossing on Friday.

The border was then closed all weekend.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said: "We remain in contact with British nationals in the region to provide them with the latest information."

It added in a statement that it was "using all diplomatic channels to press for the crossing to reopen in coordination with our international partners".

Nasser Alshanti, an academic from Manchester, told BBC News his pregnant daughter Yosra is effectively "stuck" in Egypt because her husband isn't a British citizen, and are worried they won't be able to leave before the three days are up.

Yosra was raised in the UK and moved to Gaza for university in 2015, where she met - and then married - Ibrahim. The couple had lived in central Gaza since then, until they had to flee in the first week of the war when their neighbourhood was bombed.

They were evacuated from Gaza into Egypt via the southern border crossing at Rafah at the end of last week, and are now in Cairo.

Because Ibrahim is not a British national, they now need to apply for a Family Visa for him before they can travel to the UK.

But the 72-hour deadline in Egypt means they are worried about overstaying if they don't get a visa in time. Under current rules, overstaying would mean having to pay a fine, which could be greater the longer they stay.

"I thought they would give him an emergency visa or something, a very quick visa just to evacuate them from Cairo before the end of the 72 hours," Dr Alshanti said.

A British Family Visa application submitted outside the UK normally takes up to six months to process.

The FCDO and Home Office are working together to approve visas for non-British family members of British people who've been evacuated from Gaza, with a sped-up process that they expect to be much quicker than usual. However, it's not yet known how long this will take.

Dr Alshanti said that sheltering in Gaza in the last few weeks, and now the stress of being in limbo in Egypt, has taken its toll on his daughter.

"I've just done a video call with her," he said. "You can tell from her face how much weight she's lost. The last time I saw Yosra was in August, which was just three months ago - but she's totally different. You can see how her eyes [are sunken] and her face is quite pale.

"For a heavily pregnant lady, after three weeks in a shelter with a small amount of food and water and no electricity - what do you expect?"