Palestinians seek slivers of safety as Israel battles Hamas in south Gaza city

Gazans crammed into Rafah on the border with Egypt, heeding Israeli leaflets and messages saying that they would be safe in the city. But medics and relatives said Israeli air strikes had killed 17 people in a house there on Wednesday sheltering some of those displaced from further north.

"The house was targeted by three rockets. They targeted women and children, as you can see, and the guests who were told the south would be safe," said Bassam al-Hobi, a member of the family that was hit, gesturing to bodies wrapped in white cloth, some small, lined up on the ground and surrounded by mourners.

As well as the 17 dead, three were missing and others wounded, he said. Elsewhere in Rafah, medics said four people had been killed while traveling in a rickshaw on Thursday.

Israel said militants had fired at least one rocket from Rafah and that it had killed a number of gunmen in southern Gaza's largest city, Khan Younis, including two militants who emerged firing from a tunnel.

Hamas' armed wing, al-Qassam Brigades, said combat was fierce after troops entered the heart of Khan Younis on Wednesday in a new phase of the war, which is now entering its third month.

Palestinian health officials said an Israeli air strike had killed two people in Khan Younis on Thursday morning, while in central Gaza, medics said four people had been killed in a house in Nusseirat refugee camp overnight.

Those who escape violence face an increasingly desperate struggle to survive.

Hundreds of people packed a road in central city of Deir al-Balah, waiting for food outside a U.N. compound that had yet to open, a video posted by Ramy Abdu, founder of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, showed.

The U.N. Palestinian Refugee Agency (UNRWA) said 1.9 million people - 85 percent of Gaza's population - had been displaced, its shelters were four times over capacity, and there was not enough aid to meet "the overwhelming needs".

The Palestinian death toll in the eight weeks of warfare reported by Gaza medics was at 16,015, including 43 reported by one hospital on Tuesday and 73 by another on Wednesday.

Gaza's health ministry has not released overall casualty figures since Monday, and it and the U.N. say hundreds of people are unaccounted for under rubble.