Israel's tanks pushed into the heart of Jabalia in northern Gaza on Thursday, facing anti-tank rockets and mortar bombs from militants concentrated there, while in the south, its forces pounded Rafah without advancing, Palestinian residents and militants said.

The slow progress of Israel's offensive, more than seven months after it was prompted by Hamas' deadly cross-border raid, highlighted the difficulty of achieving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's aim of eradicating the militant group.

Armed wings of Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad have been able to fight up and down the Gaza Strip, using heavily fortified tunnels to stage attacks in both the north — the focus of Israel's initial invasion — and new battlegrounds like Rafah.

"We are wearing Hamas down," Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said, announcing that more troops would be deployed in Rafah, where he said several tunnels had been destroyed.

Israel says four Hamas battalions are now in Rafah along with hostages abducted during the October 7 assault but faces pressure from the US, Europe and the UN not to invade the city, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinian civilians are sheltering.

The Gaza death toll has risen to 35,272, health officials in the Hamas-run coastal enclave said, and malnutrition is widespread as international aid efforts are blocked by the violence and Israel's de-facto shutdowns of its Kerem Shalom crossing and the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.

Israel says Hamas is diverting aid and it needs to eliminate the organisation for its protection after the deaths of 1,200 people on October 7 and to free the 128 hostages still held out of 253 abducted by the militants, according to its tallies.

The US anchored a temporary floating pier to a beach in Gaza on Thursday to boost aid deliveries, but it was still unclear how it would be distributed given the challenges that have beset the UN and relief groups for months.

Egyptian sources said Cairo, which fears a mass exodus from Gaza to Egypt, had rejected an Israeli request to coordinate on the reopening of the Rafah border crossing, which Israel seized on May 7, and keep it beyond Palestinian control.

Ceasefire and hostage release talks are deadlocked over how to end the war. Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh said his group, which has run Gaza since 2007, should continue to have a role while President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, mediating along with Qatar and the US, said Israel was not doing enough.

Israel declared major operations in northern Gaza months ago while pledging to return to prevent Hamas regrouping.

On Thursday, around a week after they moved back in, Israeli tanks were heavily bombarding the main market in the heart of Jabalia, a decades-old refugee camp, and several stores there caught fire, residents and Hamas media outlets said.