Hamas said Wednesday that seven hostages, including three foreign passport holders, were killed in Israel's bombing of Gaza's largest refugee camp.

Dozens of bodies were seen on Tuesday at the Jabalia camp where Israel said it killed a Hamas military commander in a strike on a tunnel complex.

Bolivia's government severed diplomatic relations with Israel on Tuesday, accusing it of carrying out "crimes against humanity" in Gaza, and Chile and Colombia recalled their ambassadors to Israel as they criticized the Israeli military offensive against Hamas militants.

Bolivian officials cited the number of Palestinian casualties in Gaza that have resulted from the latest Israel-Hamas war, but made no mention of the Hamas attack on Israel at the start of the conflict.

Palestinians reported another widespread outage of internet and phone service in Gaza early Wednesday, hours after Israeli airstrikes leveled apartment buildings near Gaza City and as ground troops battled Hamas militants inside the besieged territory.

Humanitarian aid agencies have warned that such blackouts severely disrupt their work in an already dire situation in Gaza, where more than half of the population of 2.3 million Palestinians has been displaced and basic supplies are running low more than three weeks into the war triggered by Hamas' bloody Oct. 7 rampage into southern Israel.

Scores of foreign passport holders trapped in Gaza started leaving the war-torn territory on Wednesday as the Rafah crossing to Egypt opened for the first time since the October 7 Hamas attacks, AFP correspondents reported.

Convoys of desperately needed aid have passed between Egypt and Gaza but no people have been allowed to cross. Some 400 foreigners and dual nationals along with some 90 sick and wounded were expected to leave on Wednesday.

Cyprus is working out with partners in the European Union and the Middle East the logistics to establish a sea corridor to deliver a stream of vital humanitarian aid to Gaza from the island's main port of Limassol once the situation on the ground permits it, authorities said Tuesday.

A senior government official — who spoke on condition of anonymity because he's not authorized to publicly discuss details of the proposal — said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "wasn't opposed" to the idea pitched by Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides last week.

Iran said on Tuesday it was "natural" for Tehran-backed groups to attack Israel in light of its war on Hamas, warning of a wider spillover if no ceasefire is reached.

Israeli forces were engaged in "fierce battles" with Hamas militants inside the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, the army said, as it continued to pummel the Palestinian territory with air and artillery strikes.

Israeli forces are "engaged in fierce battles with Hamas terrorists deep inside the Gaza Strip," the army said in a statement, adding that dozens of militants had been killed in the past few hours.

Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels Tuesday pledged more attacks against Israel if its war on Hamas in Gaza continues, saying it had already fired drones and ballistic missiles in three separate operations.

"The Yemeni Armed Forces... confirm that they will continue to carry out qualitative strikes with missiles and drones until the Israeli aggression stops," said a Houthi military statement aired on the rebels' Al-Masirah TV.

David Barnea, the director of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, visited Qatar over the weekend to discuss a possible deal for the release of some Israeli hostages held in Gaza, the Wall Street Journal quoted sources familiar with the matter as saying.

An Israeli government ministry has drafted a wartime proposal to transfer the Gaza Strip's 2.3 million people to Egypt's Sinai peninsula, drawing condemnation from the Palestinians and worsening tensions with Cairo.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office played down the report compiled by the Intelligence Ministry as a hypothetical exercise — a "concept paper." But its conclusions deepened long-standing Egyptian fears that Israel wants to make Gaza into Egypt's problem, and revived for Palestinians memories of their greatest trauma — the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of people who fled or were forced from their homes during the fighting surrounding Israel's creation in 1948.