The fighting has pushed Gazans south, turning Rafah near the Egyptian border into a vast camp for many of the 1.9 million displaced by the conflict — 80 per cent of Gaza’s population.

“Two months on the road, moving from one place to another. These are the hardest two months we have experienced in our lives,” Abdallah Abu Daqqa, displaced from Khan Younis to Rafah, told AFP.

Air strikes have followed them. Eight more hit Rafah overnight.

AFP journalists saw around 20 corpses in white body bags, including a child, at Nasser hospital, while men gathered nearby to pray.

“We are dying here, without even the need for rockets and bomb strikes. We are dead already, dead from hunger, dead from displacement,” said Abdelkader al-Haddad, a Gaza City resident now in Rafah.