Up to six hundred Palestinian refugees trying to flee Gaza have spent another night trapped in a tunnel at the Israeli border.
The Palestinians, including many women and children, are short of food and water in the tunnel, which is part of the Erez crossing and has no sanitary facilities.
Israel's Supreme Court is today scheduled to hear a petition by local rights group Physicians for Human Rights demanding that Israeli authorities offer immediate medical treatment to any of the Gazans stranded at Erez who are in need of it, the group said.
Ran Yaron, a doctor with the group, told Israel Radio today that 15 Palestinians' lives are in danger and the necessary treatment is not available in the Gaza Strip.
"It's disgusting. People are using the walls as toilets. The women are suffering," said one man inside.
An Israeli tank blocked people from leaving or entering the tunnel yesterday. The tank pulled back later.
About 100 refugees are believed to be fleeing Fatah security men, with the others civilians seeking a better life in the West Bank.
Gaza's borders have been sealed since the street battles that led to Hamas' conquest of Gaza broke out last week.
Yesterday, Israel let in a first food aid shipment, from the UN World Food Programme - 10 truckloads of food and two trucks carrying medical supplies. The WFP ordinarily feeds 250,000 Gazans, and Shlomo Dror, an Israeli military spokesman, said aid would continue to flow, unless there is Hamas "interference."
In the Israeli incursion into southern Gaza , the troops exchanged fire with Palestinian gunmen, killing two of them, the army and militant groups said. Another three Palestinians were wounded in the shoot-out, Hamas, Palestinian Resistance Committees and Islamic Jihad said.
AP