Palestinian gunmen kept up attacks against Israeli forces on Sunday in the Gaza Strip's two main cities, weeks after they were overrun by troops and tanks, in a sign Hamas still maintains some control ahead of any potential truce.

Nearly four months into the war triggered by the Palestinian Islamist group's deadly cross-border rampage in Israel, there was persistent fighting in Gaza City in the north of the densely populated enclave, and in Khan Younis to the south.

At the weekly Israeli cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said 17 of Hamas' 24 combat battalions had been dismantled. The rest, he said, were mostly in the southern Gaza Strip - including Rafah, on the enclave's Egyptian border.

"We'll take care of them, too," he said, according to a statement from his office. Hamas does not publish its losses.

The prospect of a push into Rafah has piled pressure on the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians who have fled their homes elsewhere and are sheltering there. It also worries Cairo, which has said it will not admit any influx of Palestinian refugees in what it describes a bid to prevent any permanent dispossession.

An Israeli official told Reuters, however, that the military would coordinate with Egypt, and seek ways of evacuating most of the displaced people northward, ahead of any Rafah ground sweep.

Palestinians reported Israeli tank shelling and air strikes there, including one that killed two girls in a house.

As mourners bade farewell to the dead children, a relative, Mohammed Kaloub, said the air strike hit a room full of women and children in Rafah's al-Salam neighborhood.

"There is no safe place in Gaza, from the wire fence to the wire fence (borders from north to south), there is no safe place," he told Reuters.

Palestinian health officials said eight people were killed in separate Israeli air strikes on Deir Al-Balah areas in the central Gaza Strip. Deir Al-Balah is the second city in the enclave where Israel has not yet deployed tanks.

After conducting partial pullouts from Gaza City in the past few weeks that enabled some residents to return and pick through the rubble, Israeli forces have been mounting incursions. Netanyahu described these on Sunday as "mopping-up operations".

Before dawn on Sunday, air strikes destroyed several multi-storey buildings, including an Egyptian-funded housing project, residents said. The military said it killed seven Hamas gunmen in northern Gaza and seized weaponry. Israel's Army Radio said troops in the area were trying to penetrate two Hamas bunkers, a mission it said could take two weeks amid clashes at the sites.

"Gaza City is being wiped out," one resident who asked not to be named told Reuters. "The (Israeli) pull-out was a ruse."

'NEUTRALISING' TUNNELS

In Khan Younis, overnight Israeli shelling killed three Palestinians, medics said. Residents reported street fighting raging in western and southern areas of the city, where Israel said a soldier was killed in a Palestinian attack on Saturday.

Troops in Khan Younis seized a Hamas compound and killed several gunmen, the military said. Netanyahu said Israeli forces in the city were "neutralising" Hamas tunnels that run throughout Gaza, enabling gunmen to hole up and launch ambushes.

"This demands more time yet," he told his ministers.

Gaza health authorities, who do not differentiate between militants and civilians in their tallies, said on Sunday more than 27,300 Palestinians have been confirmed killed since the war began. They say that 70% of those killed have been women and children. Thousands more are feared lost amid the ruins.

Israel says it has killed some 10,000 gunmen in its campaign to annihilate Hamas after the Oct. 7 attack by the group, which is sworn to Israel's destruction. In the rampage, 1,200 people were killed and 253 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.

More than 130 hostages are still in Gaza, and their possible release by Hamas is among issues under discussion in Egyptian- and Qatari-mediated negotiations, that are backed by the United States, to secure a truce.

Hamas has demanded an end to the war. Israel rules that out but is open to a temporary truce.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi hosted French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne in a meeting on Sunday that Sisi's office said emphasized Egypt's collaborative efforts to establish a ceasefire and deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Israel pressures Gaza cities, health officials say 18 die in airstrikes

Israeli airstrikes killed 18 Palestinians in the Gaza cities of Rafah and Deir Al-Balah, Gaza health officials said on Saturday, as residents of the enclave feared Israel would expand its ground offensive into those last remaining areas where people have sought shelter.

Rafah is on Gaza's southern border with Egypt and more than half the enclave's 2.3 million population have fled there as the Israel Defense Forces press their nearly four-month-old war against the militant Hamas group.

Health officials in Gaza said an Israeli airstrike on a house in Rafah killed 14 people including women and children, Gaza health officials said.

There was no confirmation from the Israeli military that it carried out the strike. A military spokesperson said: "In stark contrast to Hamas' intentional attacks on Israeli men, women and children, the IDF follows international law and takes feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm."

The months of intense Israeli bombardment, triggered by Hamas' deadly attack on Israel on Oct. 7, has laid waste to Gaza and set off wider conflict in the region. The United States launched airstrikes on Friday in Iraq and Syria against targets linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guard and the militias it backs, in retaliation for a deadly attack on U.S. troops.

Gaza health authorities, who do not differentiate between militants and civilians in their tallies, say more than 27,000 Palestinians have been confirmed killed since the start of the war, 107 of them in the past 24 hours, with thousands more feared lost amid the ruins.

Israel launched its war on Hamas after the Oct. 7 onslaught by Hamas militants who killed 1,200 people and took 253 people hostage into Gaza, more than 100 of whom are still captive, according to Israeli tallies.

Israeli officials say they aim to eliminate Hamas, which has vowed to repeat its October attacks, and repatriate the hostages, many of whom are women and children.

TAKING REFUGE IN RAFAH

Tens of thousands of people have arrived in Rafah in recent days carrying belongings in their arms and pulling children on carts, since Israeli forces last week launched one of their biggest assaults of the war to capture nearby Khan Younis, the main southern city.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Thursday forces would now press on to Rafah.

"The place turned black, I couldn't see what's in front of me. It was all dust and dirt. I was touching my surroundings, I was looking for my mobile to use the flashlight to look for my children, where are they? I found them under the rubble," said Ahmed Bassam Al-Jamal, whose son was killed in Rafah.

"I cried for help and people came. I got out Yamen, the first one, he was the only one I can see, the rest were still under the rubble. They pulled out Yamen, Eileen and Sila and they pulled out their mother (all alive). We could not find Bassam, we were looking for him, but he was buried, we could not save them, I swear we couldn't," Jamal said, as he bade farewell to his dead son at the hospital.

In Khan Younis, residents said the army blew up a residential district near the city centre.

In the nearby city of Deir Al-Balah, the second major concentration of displaced people, medics said four people were killed in an airstrike on a house earlier on Saturday.

FIGHTING CONTINUES IN GAZA CITY

Although Israel is focusing its push in the south, residents and militants said fighting continued in Gaza City.

Gaza health officials said two people were killed by sniper fire. Israeli forces carried out arrests in the southern suburb of Tel Al-Hawa.

The Israeli military said its forces killed dozens of Palestinian gunmen in northern Gaza.

"During targeted raids in the northern and central Gaza Strip over the last day, IDF troops killed dozens of terrorists and destroyed numerous anti-tank missile launchers," the Israel Defense Forces said.

Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other smaller militant groups said in a separate statement their fighters engaged in fierce battles with the army in the north and the south of the enclave.

"The more the occupation forces remain on the ground, the more we will get to them," one Palestinian militant official said. "A martyr falls, another rises and takes the rifle, and we are ready to fight for many more months," he told Reuters.

Mediators are awaiting a response from Hamas to a proposal for the war's first extended ceasefire, drafted last week with Israeli and U.S. spy chiefs and communicated by Egypt and Qatar. It was unclear when Hamas leaders would visit Cairo to respond.

A brief November truce lasted just one week, when militants freed 110 women, children and foreign hostages in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli jails.

Israel pounds Gaza as fears grow of push into Rafah

Israel pressed its blistering assault in the Gaza Strip on Saturday as fears grew of a push into Rafah, the southern city teeming with civilians uprooted by the nearly four-month war.

A constant barrage of air strikes and tank fire rocked Khan Yunis during the night, an AFP journalist said of the main city in southern Gaza that has been the focus of the Israeli offensive.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said more than 100 people were killed across the Palestinian territory overnight, mostly women and children. The Israeli army said its forces killed "dozens of terrorists" in northern and central Gaza over the past 24 hours.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced by the fierce fighting have fled south to Rafah since the outbreak of the war, with their tents cramming spaces along streets and in parks.

The city that had been home to 200,000 people now hosts more than half of Gaza's 2.4 million population, the World Health Organization said on Friday.

Witnesses in Rafah said 12 people were killed in an air strike on a house owned by the Hijazi family.

"They bombed without any warning," said 45-year-old Bilal Jad, a neighbour whose house was damaged in the attack. "There's no safe place anywhere. The air strikes are everywhere."

Civilians who fled to Rafah have been pushed up against the border with Egypt, trying to avoid parts of the city exposed to the fighting in nearby Khan Yunis.

One of them, Abdulkarim Misbah, said he fled his home in Jabalia refugee camp in the north and reached Khan Yunis, only to be uprooted once more.

"We escaped last week from death in Khan Yunis, without bringing anything with us," the 32-year-old said.

- 'Pressure cooker of despair' -

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

"Rafah is a pressure cooker of despair, and we fear for what comes next," said OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant had warned on Thursday that the military was set to train its sights on Rafah.

"We are achieving our missions in Khan Yunis, and we will also reach Rafah and eliminate terror elements that threaten us," he said in a video message the defence ministry sent to journalists.

The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

Militants also seized around 250 hostages, and Israel says 132 remain in Gaza, including at least 27 believed to have been killed.

Vowing to crush Hamas, Israel launched a massive military offensive that has killed at least 27,131 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry.

The fighting has devastated the narrow coastal strip, while an Israeli siege has resulted in dire shortages of food, water, fuel and medicines.

- New push for truce -

Image analysis released Friday by the UN satellite centre UNITAR based on footage collected on January 6 and 7 showed "approximately 30 percent" of Gaza's structures had been affected by the war.

The soaring civilian death toll in Gaza, as well as fears among Israelis over the fate of the hostages, have fuelled calls for a ceasefire.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to the Middle East yet again in the coming days to press a new proposal involving the release of Israeli hostages in return for a pause in the fighting, the State Department said.

Blinken will visit Qatar and Egypt -- the mediators of the proposal -- as well as Israel, the occupied West Bank and Saudi Arabia starting Sunday, it added.

The trip -- his fifth since the war broke out -- comes after Qatar's foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari said there were hopes of "good news" about a fresh pause to the fighting "in the next couple of weeks".

Ansari said a truce proposal thrashed out in Paris had "been approved by the Israeli side" and received a "positive" initial response from Hamas as well.

But a source close to Hamas told AFP: "There is no agreement on the framework of the agreement yet -- the factions have important observations -- and the Qatari statement is rushed and not true."

- US hits Iran proxies -

A Hamas source said it had been presented with a plan involving an initial six-week pause in fighting that would see more aid delivered into Gaza and exchanges of certain Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

The leaders of Hamas and its Gaza ally Islamic Jihad, Qatar-based Ismail Haniyeh and Ziyad al-Nakhalah, respectively, discussed the latest development and said any future ceasefire must lead to "a full withdrawal" of Israeli troops from Gaza, Haniyeh's office said.

The war has sparked a surge in attacks by Iran-backed groups in the region in support of the Palestinians.

The US military launched a wave of air strikes against Iranian forces and Tehran-backed fighters in Iraq and Syria on Friday in retaliation for a drone attack in Jordan that killed three US soldiers on Sunday.

US forces in the Middle East and their allies have faced stepped-up attacks since the war in Gaza began, coming under fire more than 165 times since mid-October.

Friday's air strikes were directed at the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' foreign operations arm, the Quds Force, and "affiliated militia groups", and hit "more than 85 targets", the US military said.

Also on Friday, the Israeli army said its defence system "successfully intercepted a surface-to-surface missile that approached Israeli territory in the area of the Red Sea", with Yemen's Huthi rebels claiming they had fired missiles towards Israel.