Telecommunication services were cut across besieged Gaza on Friday, as Israeli strikes killed dozens in southern cities where hundreds of thousands are struggling to survive hunger and cold on day 98 of the war between Israel and Hamas.
The fighting between Hamas and Israeli forces raged after a night of heavy Israeli shelling, and came amid growing fears of the conflict widening after US and British forces struck pro-Hamas Houthi rebels in Yemen after attacks on Red Sea shipping.
In Gaza, an AFP journalist reported strikes and shelling hitting areas between the territory's southern cities of Khan Yunis and Rafah, which is crowded with people who have fled from the north.
Overnight Thursday-Friday, the bombardment killed at least 59 people and wounded dozens more across the besieged territory, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said.
The Israeli military said it had killed seven "terrorists" in a strike in Khan Yunis and a further 20 in the Maghazi area to the north.
Elsewhere in Rafah, resident Fayad Abu Rjeila surveyed the wreckage of a building after an Israeli strike he said had killed civilians in their homes.
"They had nothing to do with anything. People who just wanted to live," he told AFP.
Israel's military said its ground forces and air strikes had destroyed more than 700 rocket launchers in Gaza since the war began on October 7.
Israel rejects accusations of genocide
On Friday, Israel rejected as false and "grossly distorted" accusations brought by South Africa at the UN's top court that its military operation in Gaza is a state-led genocide campaign against Palestinians.
Arguing it was acting to defend itself and was fighting Hamas, not the Palestinian population, Israel called on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to dismiss the case as groundless and reject South Africa's request to order it to halt the offensive.
"This is no genocide," lawyer Malcolm Shaw said.
South Africa told the court on Thursday that Israel's aerial and ground offensive - which has laid waste to much of the enclave and killed almost 24,000 people, according to Gaza health authorities - aimed to bring about "the destruction of the population" of Gaza.
Israel rejected the accusations, saying it respected international law and had a right to defend itself.
"The appalling suffering of civilians, both Israeli and Palestinian, is first and foremost the result of Hamas' strategy," the Israeli foreign ministry's legal adviser, Tal Becker told the court.
"If there were acts of genocide, they have been perpetrated against Israel," Becker said. "Hamas seeks genocide against Israel."
The 1948 Genocide Convention, enacted in the wake of the mass murder of Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, defines genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."
