The civil defense agency in Gaza and hospital medics said at least four people, including three children, were killed in a strike early on Wednesday targeting a house in Beit Lahia, in the north.

In Rafah, residents told Reuters that fighting intensified in the Tel Al-Sultan neighborhood in the western of the city, where Israeli tanks were trying to force their way north.

Medics also said two Palestinians were killed in one Israeli missile strike in Rafah earlier on Wednesday.

Israel has killed at least 37,658 people in Gaza, mostly children and women, since 7 October, according to the latest toll by the Palestinian health ministry.

Aid group outraged

An Israeli air raid on Tuesday killed Fadi Al-Wadiya, an employee of the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

MSF said on social media platform X that it was "outraged" by Wadiya's killing in a strike in Gaza City.

"The attack killed Fadi, along with five other people including three children while he was cycling to work near the MSF clinic where he was providing care," the charity said.

UN and humanitarian agencies have repeatedly warned that aid workers are not safe in Gaza, impeding their desperately needed efforts to deliver aid to Gaza's 2.4 million people.

"Catastrophic" hunger

UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini warned of the war's dire impact on children.

"We have every day 10 children who are losing one leg or two legs on average," Lazzarini told reporters, with amputations often taking place "in quite horrible conditions" and sometimes without anaesthesia.

"Ten per day, that means around 2,000 children after the more than 260 days of this brutal war."

Meanwhile, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification partnership said its March warning of imminent famine in north Gaza had not materialised, but around 495,000 people still face "catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity".

"The situation in Gaza remains catastrophic and there is a high and sustained risk of famine across the whole Gaza Strip," it said in a report.

Netanyahu on Sunday said "the war in its intense phase is about to end in Rafah", which the Israeli military sees as Hamas's last stronghold, with some troops to be redeployed to the northern border with Lebanon.