GAZA STRIP: The UN chief warned on Monday that an invasion of Rafah in far-southern Gaza would "put the final nail in the coffin" of aid operations, after Israel said its army had readied a plan to move civilians out of the packed city.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Rafah -- where 1.4 million Palestinians live in crowded shelters near the Egyptian border -- is also "the core of the humanitarian aid operation" in the besieged Gaza Strip.
As tensions simmered across the region, Israel fired the first strikes on Lebanon's east since the start of the Gaza war, killing two fighters.
In another shock impact of the almost five-month-old war, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh in the occupied West Bank handed in his government's resignation to the head of the Palestinian Authority, President Mahmud Abbas.
Shtayyeh cited "the new reality" in Gaza and "the escalation in the West Bank and Jerusalem", where deadly violence has surged since the war began on October 7.
Shtayyeh urged intra-Palestinian consensus after years of rift and the "extension of the Authority's rule over the entire land of Palestine".
Heavy fighting raged on in Gaza, where Israeli forces launched strikes and ground operations, killing 92 people overnight according to the territory's health ministry.
Displaced Gazan Sharif Muammar said his son's body had been pulled from the rubble in Rafah.
"There was no one here -- only children, they are all children," he said.
"There were no fighters at all. We weren't launching missiles... We barely live."
Israel's military campaign has killed at least 29,782 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the ministry.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed on Sunday that, despite ongoing talks towards a ceasefire, the army will launch a ground invasion of Rafah.
Once land operations are launched there, an Israeli victory would be "weeks away", he said, adding that any truce deal would delay, not prevent, the operation. On Monday Netanyahu's office said the military had shown Israel's war cabinet its plan for evacuating civilians from Rafah.
But no details have been released on where those displaced people could go in war-torn Gaza.
Neighbouring Egypt has built a large walled enclosure next to Gaza, but Cairo has denied any plans to allow the mass flight of refugees across the border.
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