GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories, Feb 3, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - 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 14
people 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 right 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.

- Broken families -

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

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

In response, Israel launched a withering offensive that has killed at least
27,131 people in the Gaza Strip, mostly women and children, according to the
health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

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.

Nearly four months of fighting have devastated the coastal strip, while an
Israeli siege has resulted in dire shortages of food, water, fuel and
medicines.

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

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC),
meanwhile, announced the deaths of three Palestinian Red Crescent workers --
two on Wednesday and one on Friday -- around Al-Amal hospital in Khan Yunis.

"Any attack on healthcare workers, ambulances, and medical facilities is
unacceptable," the IFRC said in a statement.

- Diplomatic push -

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

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".

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

However, a source close to the group 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."

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.

- Iraq, Syria strikes -

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
Quds Force and "affiliated militia groups", and hit "more than 85 targets",
the US Central Command said in a statement.

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.