Turkish police Sunday fired tear gas to disperse a pro-Palestinian rally staged outside a military base housing US forces just hours before the arrival in Ankara of Washington's top diplomat.

The protest outside the Incirlik Air Base in southeastern Turkey was organised by the IHH humanitarian relief fund, which in 2010 led a flotilla to Gaza that sparked Israeli raids in which 10 civilians died.

An AFP photographer said the police intervened when the crowd began to walk toward the base after holding a peaceful rally in Incirlik.

A German citizen abducted in Dubai and sentenced to death by Iran is almost unable to walk and talk due to health conditions that prison authorities have failed to properly treat, his daughter told AFP.

Jamshid Sharmahd, who is also a US resident, suffers from Parkinson's disease and could die due to his deteriorating health, Gazelle Sharmahd told AFP after her father last week made a rare phone call from prison to the family.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Gazans "must not be forcibly displaced", speaking on a surprise visit Sunday to the Israeli-occupied West Bank to meet Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

It was the top US diplomat's first visit to the Palestinian territory since war erupted between Israel and Hamas following the October 7 attack that killed 1,400 people on Israeli soil, mostly civilians, according to Israeli officials.

Israel said Sunday it was pounding Gaza with "significant" strikes after cutting it in two, as America's top diplomat pressed a Middle East tour focused on humanitarian aid for the Palestinians.

Israeli forces "have encircled Gaza City... Now there exists a south Gaza and a north Gaza", army spokesman Daniel Hagari said.

Shortly before the strikes, internet and telephone lines were cut, and the strikes would continue over night and in the days to come, he added.

Israel pressed its war to crush Hamas on Sunday nearly a month after the worst attack in the country's history, as the Palestinian group said strikes on a central Gaza refugee camp killed dozens.

Fighting continues to rage in densely populated Gaza, despite calls for a ceasefire from Arab countries and desperate civilians after 30 days of war.

Since a shock Hamas attack on October 7, which Israeli officials say has killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians, Israel has bombarded the besieged Gaza Strip.

Israelis, deeply divided since Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power last year, have united against Hamas in war, but experts predict the veteran leader will be fighting for his survival when the conflict ends.

In the shock that gripped Israel after Hamas's October 7 attacks, the country has closed ranks behind the military operation that the 74-year-old ordered to "crush" the Palestinian militants.

One month after Israel was wracked by Hamas attacks, life has been upended for both the Palestinians and Israel after it launched a war of reprisal in the Gaza Strip.

The October 7 attacks by Hamas militants who stormed across from Gaza and struck kibbutzim and southern Israeli areas killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and deeply scarred the nation.

Images of charred and mutilated bodies invoked comparisons to the horror of the Holocaust, and the abduction of more than 240 people by the Hamas gunmen continues to stir political and emotional turmoil.

Thousands of protesters in the US capital on Saturday called for a ceasefire in Gaza amid Israel's relentless bombing campaign, with some slamming President Joe Biden's support for Washington's top ally in the Middle East.

The rally, at which demonstrators waved Palestinian flags and wore the traditional keffiyeh scarf, was the largest protest in Washington since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas conflict on October 7.

"Free, free Palestine," and "End the siege on Gaza now," the protesters shouted.

Thousands demonstrated in Israel on Saturday, as pressure mounts on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his government's lack of preparedness for the October 7 attacks and its handling of the ensuing hostage crisis.

The attacks by Gaza's ruling Islamist movement Hamas took the Israeli military and political establishment by surprise and killed more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians, with 240 more taken hostage, according to the army.

AFP on Saturday called on Israel for "an in-depth and transparent investigation" into the exact involvement of its army after a strike severely damaged its office in Gaza City, which has been shelled for weeks.

AFP "has taken note of the recent statements from the Israeli army spokesman concerning 'an army strike nearby (the AFP office) that might have caused debris'," it said in a statement.