Residents of Gaza City were trapped in houses and bodies lay uncollected in the streets under an intense new Israeli assault yesterday, even as Washington pushed for a peace deal at talks in Egypt and Qatar.

Israeli forces launched more deadly strikes across Gaza yesterday, according to medical sources and the military, which said it targeted Hamas members operating from inside a UN agency building.

Palestinian sources said at least 29 people were killed Tuesday in a strike on a school being used to shelter displaced people in Gaza, the fourth such incident in four days, with Hamas blaming Israel for the deaths

Gaza City residents fled under Israeli fire as tanks thrust deeper into the heart of the city yesterday, the second day of a stepped-up military offensive that Hamas said could jeopardise ceasefire talks.

Israeli forces bombarded Gaza City early yesterday and columns of tanks advanced into the heart of the city from different directions in what residents said was one of the heaviest attacks in the Palestinian territory since the start of the offensive.

Hamas is waiting for a response from Israel on its ceasefire proposal, officials from the group said yesterday, five days after it accepted a key part of a US plan aimed at ending the offensive in Gaza now in its tenth month.

Efforts to secure a ceasefire and hostage release in Gaza gathered momentum yesterday after Hamas made a revised proposal on the terms of a deal and Israel said it would resume stalled negotiations.

Lebanon's Hezbollah launched a barrage of more than 200 rockets and drones at Israeli army positions on Thursday as tensions soared amid the almost nine-month-old war raging in Gaza

Many Palestinians were seeking shelter yesterday after fleeing their homes in southern Gaza and complained of water shortages as Israel pressed on with its military offensive in the densely populated enclave.

Wafaa Elwan's five-year-old son cannot sleep in the Gaza tent city where she and her seven children shelter, but it is not the guns of war that cause his daily nightmare

Israeli forces bombarded several areas of the southern Gaza Strip yesterday and thousands of Palestinians fled their homes in what could be part of a final push of Israel’s intensive military operations in nine months of offensive.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad group fired a barrage of rockets into Israel yesterday, in an apparent show of force as Israeli tanks pressed their advance deeper into Gaza amid fierce fighting, residents and officials said.

Israeli forces yesterday advanced further into the Shejaia neighbourhood of northern Gaza and also pushed deeper into western and central Rafah in the south, killing at least six Palestinians and destroying several homes, residents said.

Gazan civilians are forced to live in bombed-out buildings or camp next to giant piles of trash, a United Nations spokeswoman said Friday, denouncing the “unbearable” conditions in the besieged territory.

Explosions, air strikes and gunfire rattled northern Gaza yesterday, the third day of an Israeli military operation that has uprooted tens of thousands of Palestinians and compounded what the UN called “unbearable” living conditions in the territory.

Israel’s military on Friday said it was conducting raids backed by air strikes in northern Gaza, killing “dozens” of fighters in an area where it had declared the command structure of Hamas dismantled months ago.

Says foreign minister

Israel stormed a neighbourhood in Gaza City yesterday, telling Palestinians as the tanks moved in that they must move south, and bombed the southern city of Rafah in what it says are the final stages of an operation against Hamas fighters there.

Israeli forces pounded several areas in north and south Gaza yesterday, and residents reported fierce fighting between Israeli troops and Hamas fighters in Rafah in the south of the Palestinian enclave.

Israeli forces killed at least 24 Palestinians in three separate airstrikes on Gaza City early yesterday, and the dead included a sister of Ismail Haniyeh, the chief of the Hamas group, Gaza health officials and medics said.