Israel continued its brutal offensive in southern Gaza's Rafah on Wednesday amid growing fears the war would turn into a wider regional war extending to Lebanon.
Bombardment elsewhere in the Gaza Strip, however, appeared to ease days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the "intense phase" of the war was nearing its end and as his defense minister visited Washington for crisis talks.
As the war in Gaza nears its 10th month, Israel's top ally the United States warned it of the risk of a major conflict against Iran-backed group Hezbollah in Lebanon following an escalation in cross-border fire.
"Another war between Israel and Hezbollah could easily become a regional war, with terrible consequences for the Middle East," U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told his visiting Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant.
"Diplomacy is by far the best way to prevent more escalation," Austin said.
Top Israeli officials including Netanyahu have suggested they are open to a diplomatic resolution of the border tensions, though Gallant said Israel should be ready for "every possible scenario."
Israel's military said last week plans for an offensive in Lebanon were "approved and validated," prompting fresh warnings from Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.
In Beirut on Tuesday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock warned that any "miscalculation" could trigger all-out war and urged "extreme restraint."
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Wednesday accused Western powers of backing Israel as it sets "its sights on Lebanon," seeking "to spread the war to the region."
On the ground in Rafah, on Gaza's border with Egypt, witnesses reported clashes during the night and the Israeli military said its air force struck a rocket launch site.
Mohammad al-Mughayyir, an official with the civil defense agency in Hamas-run Gaza, told AFP that rescuers had recovered the bodies of "15 martyrs from various areas in Rafah city in the past few hours."
Aid group 'outraged'
The civil defense agency and hospital medics said at least four people, including three children, were killed in a strike early Wednesday targeting a house in Beit Lahia, in the north.
Aside from that strike, agency spokesman Mahmud Basal told AFP, "there have been almost no attacks" and "the rest of the areas in the Gaza Strip are calm compared to yesterday."
An air raid on Tuesday killed Fadi al-Wadiya, an employee of medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) who the Israeli military said was a "significant operative" for Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian resistance group that has fought alongside Hamas.
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.
The military said the slain man had "developed and advanced the ... organization's rocket array."
U.N. and humanitarian agencies have repeatedly warned that aid workers are not safe in Gaza, impeding their desperately needed efforts delivering aid for Gaza's 2.4 million people.
'Rolling operations'
The conflict was triggered by the Oct. 7 Hamas incursion of southern Israel, causing the death of around 1,200 people and seizing more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel's genocidal war on Gaza, in comparison, has killed more than 37,600 Palestinians, the Gaza Health Ministry said, and reduced most of the narrow, coastal enclave to wasteland, with malnutrition widespread.
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.
"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 materialized but around 495,000 people still face "catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity."
Netanyahu said Sunday that "the war in its intense phase is about to end in Rafah," which the Israeli military sees as Hamas' last stronghold, with some troops to be redeployed to the northern border with Lebanon.
Mairav Zonszein, an analyst for the International Crisis Group, said the military would likely "move to rolling operations" in Gaza and "always keep some troops on the ground" in strategic areas of the territory.