Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital

People walk towards a devastated building at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.

Israeli forces struck Gaza and battled Hamas militants on Friday as truce efforts failed to make progress and tensions surged on Israel's northern border with Lebanon.

Witnesses reported strikes on the southern city of Rafah and central areas of the Gaza Strip.

Israeli strikes hammered a Gaza refugee camp on Friday after a deadly strike on a U.N.-run school, as the war sparked by Hamas's unprecedented attack on Israel entered its ninth month.

The conflict has killed tens of thousands, laid waste to much of the Gaza Strip, uprooted most of its 2.4 million population and put them at risk of starvation.

The U.N. Palestinian refugee agency's chief said Thursday that Israel had carried out a strike on one of its Gaza schools "without prior warning" to thousands of displaced sheltering there.

"Another UNRWA school turned shelter attacked," Philippe Lazzarini wrote on social media platform X, adding that the agency had earlier provided Israeli forces with the building's coordinates.

Israeli strikes on Saturday hit parts of Gaza including Rafah where Israel expanded an evacuation order and the U.N. warned of "epic" disaster if an outright invasion of the crowded city occurs.

Thirteen individuals, including seven children, lost their lives, while more than 25 others sustained injuries in an airstrike targeting the Al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza on Tuesday, as reported by CNN, citing officials from Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.