The Israeli military said in a statement its forces were continuing operations east of Bureij and the city of Deir al-Balah in the center of the coastal enclave, killing several Palestinian gunmen and destroying militant infrastructure.

Israel sent forces into Rafah last month in what it called a mission to wipe out Hamas' last intact combat units after eight months of conflict in which Israeli forces have bombed much of the rest of Gaza to rubble while advancing against fierce resistance.

Israeli tank forces have since seized Gaza's entire border strip with Egypt running through Rafah to the Mediterranean coast and invaded several districts of the city, prompting about 1 million displaced people who had been sheltering in Rafah to flee elsewhere.

On Sunday, tanks advanced into two new districts in an apparent effort to complete the encirclement of the eastern side of Rafah, touching off clashes with dug-in Hamasled armed groups, according to residents trapped in their homes.

Palestinian medics said an Israeli airstrike on a house in Tel Al-Sultan in western Rafah killed two people.

The conflict in Gaza has destabilized the wider Middle East. Four people were killed on Saturday in Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon, Lebanese military sources told Xinhua News Agency.

The sources said an Israeli warplane targeted a house in Houla village, killing two Hezbollah members and injuring three civilians. Another Israeli airstrike targeted a commercial market in Aitaroun village with two air-to-surface missiles, killing two civilians and wounding two others.

Hezbollah said it responded to Israel's raids on Saturday with several attacks in the occupied Shebaa Farms and a number of Israeli sites.

In Washington, thousands of protesters held a "red line" rally near the White House on Saturday, voicing anger at what they said is US President Joe Biden's tolerance of Israel's bloody military campaign in the Gaza Strip.

The White House said last month that a deadly Israeli strike on Rafah did not cross a "red line" that Biden had seemingly set two months earlier when asked about a potential invasion of the southern Gazan city.

"I no longer believe any of the words that Joe Biden says," protester Zaid Mahdawi from Virginia, whose parents are Palestinian, told Agence France-Presse.

"This 'red line' in his rhetoric is rubbish... it shows his hypocrisy and his cowardice."

Agencies via Xinhua