Officials from the U.S., Egypt, Israel and Qatar met in Cairo on Tuesday in another bid to agree to a Gaza truce as calls grew for Israel to hold back on a planned assault on the enclave’s southernmost city, crammed with over a million displaced people.
Rafah, whose pre-war population was about 300,000, is heaving with people living in tent camps and makeshift shelters who fled there from Israeli bombardments in areas of Gaza further north during more than four months of war.
Israel says it wants to flush out Hamas militants from hideouts in Rafah and free Israeli hostages being held there,
