Deadly strikes hit Gaza as US envoy visits Israel

Israeli troops have moved in on the Gaza Strip's far-southern city of Rafah, which the army describes as the last Hamas stronghold and where the United States says 800,000 civilians have been newly displaced by the fighting.
Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, said it was targeting Israeli forces stationed at Rafah crossing -- a vital conduit for humanitarian aid that is now closed -- with mortar fire, reports BSS.
Israel has also fought and bombed resurgent Hamas forces in northern and central areas of the coastal territory previously considered to be under army control, sparking US warnings that it could become mired in a lengthy counterinsurgency campaign.
In the latest aerial bombardment overnight, Gaza's civil defence agency said an Israeli strike had killed 31 people and wounded 20 in a home in thecentral Nuseirat refugee camp.
Israel's military, which on Sunday reported its aircraft had "struck dozensof terror targets" over the past 24 hours, said it was checking the reports.Witness Yasser Abu Oula told AFP an entire residential complex "wasdestroyed" and "there are still bodies under the rubble".
- Sullivan meets Netanyahu -
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to keep fighting Hamasin Gaza, following its October 7 attack that sparked the war, until the Iran-backed Islamist group is defeated and all remaining hostages are released.
But he has faced intense opposition and calls to announce a plan for Gaza'spost-war governance -- from top ally Washington, from mass street protestsand now also from members of his war cabinet.
Amid the political turmoil, Sullivan met his Israeli counterpart TzachiHanegbi and Netanyahu in Jerusalem for talks on the brutal Gaza conflict andpost-war scenarios.
He briefed Netanyahu on the "potential" of a normalization deal betweenIsrael and Saudi Arabia after holding talks in the region, the White Housesaid Sunday.
Sullivan also called on the Israeli prime minister to link the militaryoperation against Hamas in Gaza with a "political strategy" for the future ofthe Palestinian enclave, it added.
Washington has pushed for a post-war plan for Gaza involving Palestinians andsupported by regional powers, as well as for a broader diplomatic deal underwhich Israel and regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia would normalise relations.
Israel's Centrist politician Benny Gantz threatened Saturday to quit thegoverning hard-right coalition over just this issue. He has called forNetanyahu to approve a post-war "action plan" by June 8.
Gantz demanded steps to defeat Hamas, to bring home the hostages, and towardsforming an "American, European, Arab and Palestinian administration that willmanage civilian affairs in the Gaza Strip".
Netanyahu has dismissed Gantz's comments, saying they would lead to "a defeatfor Israel" and "the establishment of a Palestinian state", which he fiercelyopposes.
- 'Day after' scenarios -
US President Joe Biden called Sunday for an immediate Gaza ceasefire and saidhe was pushing for a regional peace deal "to get a two-state solution, theonly solution".
The Gaza war broke out after Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack onIsrael, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostlycivilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Hamas also took about 250 hostages during the October 7 attack, of whom 124remain held in Gaza including 37 the army says are dead.
Israel's retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed at least 35,456people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to data provided by theHamas-run territory's health ministry.
In central Israel on Sunday, mourners gathered for the funeral of German-Israeli Shani Louk, 22, whose body was recovered Thursday from Gaza by troopswho also took back three other dead hostages.
- 'Almost' no aid -
Israel has imposed a siege on the long-blockaded Gaza Strip, depriving its2.4 million people of normal access to clean water, food, medicines and fuel,the suffering eased only by sporadic aid shipments by land, air and sea.
The head of the UN agency helping Palestinians said that "despite all thecalls by the international community not to launch an offensive in Rafah, inreality an offensive started on May 6".
Since then, "we have again about half of the population of Gaza being on theroad forced to flee" for safety once more, though "we keep saying there isabsolutely nowhere to go," UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini told reporters inAmman.
Lazzarini said that because of the fighting, "almost nothing in terms of aidis crossing" into Gaza, raising fears that recent gains made "to prevent alooming famine ... might quickly be reversed".
Truck arrivals have slowed after the Rafah crossing with Egypt closed whenIsrael launched its operation in the city.
After a series of attacks on Gaza-bound trucks in Israel, a group of Israeliactivists on Sunday travelled with an aid convoy to protect it, an AFPcorrespondent said.
Aid has also begun entering via a temporary US-built floating pier, whereshipments sent from Cyprus are offloaded for distribution.
The United Arab Emirates said Sunday a shipment of 252 tonnes of aid had beenunloaded after arriving from the Cypriot port of Larnaca.
The UN's humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths warned that if dire fuel shortages were not alleviated, the "famine which we have talked about for so long, and which is looming, will not be looming anymore. It will be present".
"Our worry ... is that the consequence is going to be really, really hard," he told AFP in Qatar. "Hard, difficult, and apocalyptic."