STORY: Palestinian gunmen kept up attacks against Israeli forces on Sunday in the Gaza Strip’s two main cities, weeks after they were overrun by troops and tanks.

It’s a sign Palestinian Islamist group Hamas still maintains some control, ahead of any potential truce.

Persistent fighting could be seen in Gaza City in the north, and Khan Younis to the south.

The war, triggered by Hamas’ deadly cross-border rampage in Israel, is almost in its fourth month.

In Gaza’s Rafah on Sunday, Palestinians swept up rubble that used to form their homes.

Locals had reported Israeli tank shelling and air strikes there, including one that killed two girls in a house.

“The room collapsed completely over their heads,” he said. “The scenes were horrible”.

At Israel’s weekly cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said 17 of Hamas’ 24 combat battalions had been dismantled.

The rest, he said, were mostly in the southern Gaza Strip – including Rafah, which sits on the enclave’s Egyptian border.

Hamas does not publish its losses.

The prospect of a push into Rafah has piled pressure on the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians sheltering there, having fled their homes elsewhere.

It also worries Cairo, which has said it will not admit any influx of Palestinian refugees, in what it says is a bid to prevent any permanent dispossession.

An Israeli official told Reuters that the military would coordinate with Egypt, and seek ways of evacuating most of the displaced people northward ahead of any Rafah ground sweep.

Gaza health authorities, who do not differentiate between militants and civilians in their tallies, said on Sunday more than 27,300 Palestinians have been confirmed killed since the war began.

They say 70% of those killed have been women and children. Thousands more are feared lost in the ruins.

In Hamas’ October 7 rampage into Israel, 1,200 people were killed and 253 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies. More than 130 hostages are still in Gaza.

Their possible release by Hamas is among issues under discussion in Egyptian- and Qatari-mediated negotiations, that are backed by the United States, to secure a truce.

Hamas has demanded an end to the war. Israel rules that out but is open to a temporary truce.