Nearly 18,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli bombings since October 7. Israel says it is targeting Hamas fighters who carried out an attack in Israel that killed more than 1,000 people.

The call for the strike was announced by Palestinian National and Islamic forces, a coalition of major Palestinian factions.

Meanwhile, heavy fighting was reported in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis on Tuesday, a day after Israel claimed it was withdrawing thousands of troops from other areas.

Israel's bombardment have devastated the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to press ahead with the war despite global calls for ceasefire.

Israel is under growing international pressure to scale back the offensive that has killed nearly 22,000 Palestinians. 

Palestinians reported heavy airstrikes and artillery shelling overnight and into Tuesday in the southern city of Khan Younis and farming areas to the east, near the border with Israel. Fighting was also underway in and around the built-up Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza

Even in Gaza City, which has been largely depopulated and where Israeli ground troops have been battling militants for over two months, residents said there were clashes in different neighborhoods, as well as in the nearby urban Jabaliya refugee camp

The war has displaced 85 per cent of Gaza's population, forcing hundreds of thousands of people into overcrowded shelters or teeming tent camps in Israeli-designated safe areas that the military has nevertheless bombed. Palestinians are left with a sense that nowhere is safe

The widespread death and destruction unprecedented in the century-old Mideast conflict led South Africa to file a case against Israel at the ICJ, accusing it of genocidal acts that aim to destroy Palestinians in Gaza.