Tens of thousands of displaced and exhausted Palestinians have packed up their tents and other belongings from Rafah, dragging families on a new exodus.

The main hospital has shut down, leaving little care for people suffering from malnutrition, illnesses and wounds.

A shipment of humanitarian aid has left a port in Cyprus and is on its way to the U.S-built pier in Gaza, the first delivery to the newly built ramp, Cyprus' foreign minister said Thursday.

The U.S. vessel, loaded with much needed humanitarian assistance, departed from the Larnaca port with the aim of transferring as much aid to Gaza as possible through the maritime corridor, said Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos.

Yemen's Houthi rebels on Thursday claimed responsibility for two missile attacks in the Gulf of Aden on two Panama-flagged container ships that caused no damage. Meanwhile, an adviser to Iran's supreme leader again threatened that Tehran could build a nuclear weapon if it chose to pursue atomic armaments.

The comments by Yemeni military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree and former Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi come as the allies of Hamas continue to pressure Israel over its continuing war on the militant group in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli strikes on Syria early Thursday targeted facilities belonging to Iraq's Al-Nujaba armed movement, a war monitor and the pro-Iran group said, with Damascus saying an unidentified building was attacked.

Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria since the outbreak of the civil war in its northern neighbour in 2011, mainly against army positions and Iran-backed fighters.

The grass outside SOAS University of London has been dotted with a handful of tents since the start of this week, with Palestinian flags and slogans calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

There are similar sites at universities across Britain, and so far the protests have been peaceful and left alone by the police, unlike in the United States, France and other countries.

Israel's ambassador to the United Nations expressed disappointment Thursday at U.S. President Joe Biden's threat to stop certain arms supplies to Israel if it invades the crowded Gaza city of Rafah.

"This is a difficult and very disappointing statement to hear from a president to whom we have been grateful since the beginning of the war," Gilad Erdan told Israeli public broadcaster Kan radio, in Israel's first reaction to Biden's warning.

Hamas has formally accepted a cease-fire deal that could end the war in Gaza. Israel, however, insists that its core demands were not met in the proposal mediated by Egypt and Qatar.

The Palestinian militant group says the cease-fire would unfold in three phases of six to seven weeks each, with Israeli hostages released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from all of the Gaza Strip and increased humanitarian aid.

Hospitals in the southern Gaza Strip have only three days of fuel left, the head of the World Health Organization said Wednesday, due to the closure of border crossings.

"The closure of the border crossing continues to prevent the U.N. from bringing fuel. Without fuel all humanitarian operations will stop. Border closures are also impeding delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza. Hospitals in the south of Gaza only have three days of fuel left, which means services may soon come to a halt," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X, formerly Twitter.

The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S., a senior administration official said Tuesday.

The shipment was supposed to consist of 1,800 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) bombs and 1,700 500-pound (225-kilogram) bombs, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter, with the focus of U.S. concern being the larger explosives and how they could be used in a dense urban setting. More than 1 million civilians are sheltering in Rafah after evacuating other parts of Gaza amid Israel's war on Hamas, which came after the militant group's deadly attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

The Russian foreign ministry on Wednesday insisted that Israel strictly observe international humanitarian law after its tanks entered the border city of Rafah.

At a briefing, spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Russia sees the incursion as "an additional destabilizing factor" in an area with more than a million civilians, and therefore "we demand strict observance of the provisions of international humanitarian law," the RIA Novosti state news agency reported.