The U.S. military has finished installing a floating pier for delivering humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, besieged after seven months of fighting in the Israel-Hamas war.

Israel, preparing for a possible Rafah invasion, faces increased tension with the U.S. over the Gaza humanitarian crisis. To the north, it's also confronting Hezbollah attacks coming in from Lebanon.

Israeli tanks forged deeper into eastern Rafah, reaching some residential districts on Tuesday, stepping up an offensive in the southern border city where more than a million people had been sheltering after being displaced in seven months of war.

The United Nations’ agency for Palestinian refugees said 360,000 Palestinians have fled Rafah over the past week, out of 1.3 million who were sheltering there before the operation began. Most had already fled fighting elsewhere during the seven-month war between Israel and Hamas.

Israel’s military operation in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah has set ceasefire negotiations with Hamas “backward”, mediator Qatar has said, adding that the talks have lost steam. “Especially in the past few weeks,