Major Israeli military action on Rafah, in Gaza's far south, would heap further devastation on civilians, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) warned Friday.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week said he had ordered troops to prepare to go into the city as Israel hunts down those behind Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel.

But UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini, under pressure after Israel alleged 12 of the agency's staff took part in the deadly assault, said the humanitarian situation in Rafah was increasingly desperate.

Israeli air strikes pummelled densely crowded Rafah on Saturday after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered his troops to "prepare to operate" in the southern border city that has become a last refuge for displaced Palestinians.

Netanyahu's planned offensive on Rafah, where an estimated 1.3 million people have fled, has drawn condemnation from rights groups and Washington, while Palestinians have said they have nowhere left to retreat.

To arrive at work in Jerusalem on time, Murad Khalid must be at the Israeli checkpoint by 3:00 am, despite living nearby in the occupied West Bank -- a constant challenge made worse by the Gaza war.

The 27-year-old said he and other residents of Kafr Aqab neighbourhood in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem -- located on the West Bank side of the barrier -- are subjected to a "security check that may take an hour for each car" at Qalandia crossing.

Israeli movement restrictions have long made life difficult for the three million Palestinians living in the West Bank.

Adel al-Hajj fears Israeli forces could at any moment launch an "invasion" of southern Gaza's Rafah city, where he and more than a million other Palestinians have fled for safety.

Teeming with displaced Gazans huddled in makeshift camps, Rafah has swelled to about five times its pre-war size since fighting between Israel and Gaza rulers Hamas erupted in October.

The city is one of the few areas spared an Israeli ground offensive, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this week he had ordered troops to "prepare to operate" there.

Israel conducted fresh strikes on southern Gaza's overcrowded border town of Rafah on Friday, where more than a million displaced Palestinians have sought shelter, with key backer the United States warning of a looming "disaster".

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he has ordered troops to "prepare to operate" in Rafah, the last major town in the Gaza Strip Israeli ground troops have yet to enter.

OpenAI chief Sam Altman is seeking to raise trillions of dollars to reshape the global semiconductor industry, and has held talks with potential investors including the UAE government, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

Altman is reportedly looking to resolve some of the biggest challenges faced by the rapidly-expanding artificial intelligence sector -- including a shortage of the expensive computer chips needed to power large-language models like OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Israeli history teacher Meir Baruchin has paid a high price for denouncing the war in Gaza: he was sacked from his job and even locked up as a "high-risk detainee".

The school teacher triggered a firestorm after Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7, by posting a photo of Palestinians killed by the Israeli army.

He has now been given permission to teach students again at the Yitzhak Shamir High School in Petah Tikva near Tel Aviv.

But the approval is only provisional and he has to do so remotely so as not to cause incidents.

Meta on Thursday said it had removed the Facebook and Instagram accounts of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for violating its content policy.

"We have removed these accounts for repeatedly violating our Dangerous Organizations & Individuals policy," a Meta spokesperson told AFP.

Though Meta did not mention the Israel-Hamas war, the company has been under pressure to ban the leader ever since the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel.

After the attack, Khamenei supported the bloody rampage by Hamas, but denied any Iranian involvement.

Hundreds of thousands of people's lives are at risk in north and central Gaza because of a lack of food, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) warned on Thursday.

UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said the last time the agency was allowed to deliver supplies to the area was more than two weeks ago on January 23.

Other agencies providing humanitarian aid also reported blocks on getting relief into the Palestinian territory, which has been bombarded by Israel since Hamas's deadly attack on October 7.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday warned that his organization's Palestinian refugee agency cannot be replaced, even as it faces criticism after 12 staffers were implicated in Hamas's attack on Israel.

Several countries -- including the United States, Britain, Germany and Japan -- have suspended funding to the UNRWA agency, and Guterres has led crunch talks with donor countries to have payments reinstated.