RAFAH: Twenty Palestinians were killed in the early hours of Tuesday in Israeli air strikes on Rafah and central parts of the Gaza Strip, Gaza health officials said, Reuters reports.

In the southern Gaza city of Rafah near the Egyptian border, where over 1 million Palestinians have sought shelter, 14 people were killed and dozens others wounded in strikes that hit several houses and apartments, Gaza medical officials said.

Six more people died in another air strike on a house in Al-Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza Strip, they added.

In Deir Al-Balah, a town in central Gaza about 14 km south of Gaza City, the sounds of explosions mixed with thunder, and rain added to the miseries of displaced families in tent camps.

US President Joe Biden said on Monday he had told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to send a team to Washington to discuss how to avoid an all-out assault in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

The move is one of the clearest attempts yet by Biden to rein in the key US ally, amid fears that the already huge death toll and humanitarian crisis in Gaza could be drastically worsened by a full attack on Rafah.

The White House said separately that Israel had killed one of Hamas’s top commanders in a strike in Gaza.

“I asked the Prime Minister to send a team to Washington to discuss ways to target Hamas without a major ground operation in Rafah,” Biden said on X after speaking to Netanyahu for the first time in more than a month.