US President Joe Biden will make a high-stakes visit to Israel as Washington said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had agreed to let humanitarian aid reach besieged Gazans.
Trucks carrying vital supplies for Gaza headed towards the Rafah crossing in Egypt, the only access point to the enclave outside of Israel's control, though it was not certain whether they would be able to cross.
A witness told Reuters some 160 trucks had set off towards the border from the nearby Egyptian town of Al-Arish, where they have been backed up waiting while diplomats tried for days to open the route.
Israel has vowed to annihilate the Hamas movement that controls Gaza after Hamas gunmen killed 1300 people, mainly civilians, during a rampage through southern Israeli towns on October 7, the deadliest single day in Israel's 75-year history.
Israel has bombarded the Gaza Strip with air strikes that have killed more than 2800 Palestinians, a quarter of them children, and driven around half of the 2.3 million Gazans from their homes.
It has imposed a total blockade on the enclave, blocking food, fuel and medical supplies, which are rapidly running out.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Biden's visit planned for Wednesday at the end of hours of talks with Netanyahu, in which he said the Israeli leader had agreed to develop a plan to get humanitarian aid to Gaza civilians. He gave no details.
"The president will hear from Israel what it needs to defend its people as we continue to work with Congress to meet those needs," Blinken said on Tuesday.
Biden would also "hear from Israel how it will conduct its operations in a way that minimises civilian casualties and enables humanitarian assistance to flow to civilians in Gaza in a way that does not benefit Hamas", Blinken added.
Washington is also trying to rally Arab states to help head off a wider regional war, after Iran pledged "pre-emptive action" from the "resistance front" of its allies which include the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon.
After visiting Israel, Biden is expected to travel to Jordan to meet King Abdullah, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority which is a rival of Hamas and has limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
In Jabalia in the north of the Gaza Strip, frantic residents were using their bare hands to lift chunks of concrete and metal, crying out when they located bodies from under rubble in a huge, smoking bombing crater. Others ran with stretchers carrying the wounded.
A man emerged from a ruined building holding the limp body of a small boy in his arms, covered in chalky soot.
In the enclave's main southern city Khan Younis, authorities said at least 49 people were killed in air strikes on homes overnight.
The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said Israel had opened a single water line to Khan Younis for three hours on Monday, but only around 14 per cent of Gazans had access to it.
"Concerns over dehydration and waterborne diseases are high given the collapse of water and sanitation services, including today’s shutdown of Gaza’s last functioning seawater desalination plant," UNRWA said in a statement.
"People will start dying without water."
As Israel plans an expected ground invasion of Gaza to root out Hamas, cross-border clashes have intensified with Hezbollah on a second front on Israel's northern border with Lebanon.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military said it had killed four people who had tried to cross the border fence to plant explosives. Israel ordered the evacuation on Monday of 28 of its villages in a 2km-deep zone near the Lebanese border.
The United Nations says a million Gazans have already been driven from their homes. Power is out, sanitary water is scarce and fuel for hospital emergency generators is running low.
