The remaining residents of Israel's northern town of Kiryat Shmona, those who have not fled rising cross-border fire from militants in Lebanon, said Friday they were ready for whatever happens.

The Israel-Lebanon border has seen escalating tit-for-tat exchanges, mainly between Israeli forces and Hezbollah, since Palestinian militants of Hezbollah ally Hamas launched a shock attack on Israel on October 7, stoking fears of a wider regional conflict.

Both Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon are backed by Iran, Israel's sworn enemy.

Three Palestinian militants were buried in the occupied West Bank on Friday after mourners marched through streets still smouldering from a night of violence triggered by an Israeli raid.

"They can do anything they want -- on our side, we are ready, we will fight and we will resist," 18-year-old militant Majid Abu Zmawa told AFP outside the mortuary in the northern city of Jenin where the bodies were prepared for burial.

They arrived at the border crossing with the Gaza Strip in a constant stream, many of them exhausted and still bearing the scars of time spent in an Israeli jail.

Some had raw wrists from being handcuffed and still had prison numbers tied round their ankles.

On Friday, Israel began to forcibly repatriate to the besieged and battered Palestinian territory thousands of Gazans who had been working in Israel.

An Israeli strike on a Gaza ambulance convoy has killed 15 people, Palestinian medics said Saturday, spurring concerns for health workers' safety as Israel accused Hamas of using the vehicles to transport fighters.

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, where some hospitals have been damaged and faced severe shortages of fuel and supplies.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken began meetings with Arab foreign ministers in Jordan on Saturday, seeking to mitigate the nearly month-long Gaza war after Israel resisted his calls for a humanitarian pause.

The Israeli army said its ground forces had operated in southern Gaza overnight, after deadly strikes hit an ambulance convoy and a school-turned-refugee shelter in the besieged Palestinian territory.

The day after an explosion that seriously damaged AFP's Gaza office, the Israeli army, which has shelled the Palestinian territory for weeks, claimed Friday it carried out a strike "nearby" to the agency's bureau without having "in any way" targeted it.

AFP is the only one of the world's three major international news agencies currently operating a live video feed from Gaza City which has not been interrupted despite the damage, seen by an AFP employee Friday.

The families of nine Israeli victims of last month's Hamas attacks have lodged a complaint at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for suspected war crimes, their lawyer said Friday.

The families also want Hamas prosecuted for genocide, and the ICC to issue an international arrest warrant for its leaders, lawyer Francois Zimeray said in a statement.

On October 7, Hamas carried out bloody raids that Israeli officials say killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel Friday, an AFP correspondent travelling with him said, in a trip focused on measures to minimise harm to civilians in the war in Gaza.

Prior to his departure, Blinken said he would seek "concrete steps" from Israel to ensure that harm to Palestinian civilians is reduced, as US President Joe Biden also called for humanitarian pauses in the conflict.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah warned Friday that war between Israel and Hamas could turn into a regional conflict if attacks on Gaza continue, placing responsibility firmly on the United States.

In his first speech since war broke out almost four weeks ago between Hamas militants and Israel, the head of the powerful Iran-backed movement warned that "all options" were open for an expansion of the conflict to Lebanon.

A journalist working for the Palestinian Authority's television channel was killed on Thursday in an Israeli strike on Gaza, his network reported, as war rages between Israel and Hamas.

"Our colleague Mohammed Abu Hatab fell as a martyr along with members of his family in an Israeli bombardment against his home in Khan Yunis" in the south of the territory, broadcaster Palestine TV station said.

Medical sources at Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis said at least 11 people were killed in the strike.