The US is offering Israel key intelligence to locate Hamas leaders hiding underground, in a bid to prevent a full-scale invasion of the Gazan city of Rafah.

In addition to offering vital intelligence about the terror group’s most wanted men – such as Yahya Sinwar, its elusive leader – Washington has offered to help create a safe refuge for Gazan evacuees.

The US has said it will provide thousands of shelters to build tent cities in which displaced civilians can take cover, and help construct delivery systems for food, water and medicine.

The offer comes after weeks of failed negotiations, as the US tries to prevent a deepening humanitarian crisis in the strip, according to a report in The Washington Post, with nearly half of the region’s 2.4 million population now seeking refuge in the south.

Rafah, Hamas’s last stronghold, remains a key target for Israel, with four untouched battalions present, in addition to other militants from around the strip.

The southern city’s border crossing into Egypt has been used to smuggle weapons and funding for Hamas, according to Israel. In addition, it has thousands of miles of tunnels which provide key movement to goods, troops and the terror group’s leaders. 

Destroying this network, buried deep beneath the strip’s civilian infrastructure, will endanger thousands more Gazans – and the US is desperate to avert a deeper humanitarian crisis, with the densely populated area already reduced to a refugee city.

David Cameron, the Foreign Secretary, said on Sunday that Israel should not carry out an offensive in Rafah without a “clear plan” to protect people.

He told Sky News: “For there to be a major offensive in Rafah, there would have to be an absolutely clear plan about how you save lives, how you move people out the way, how you make sure they’re fed, you make sure that they have medicine and shelter and everything.”

He added: “We have seen no such plan ... so we don’t support an offensive in that way.”

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has made Rafah a focal point as he reiterates his war aims to bring back the remaining 132 hostages held by Hamas and eliminate the terror group in its entirety. As the Hamas’s last military stronghold, Rafah remains a key strategic target.

Multiple commanders and figures from the Hamas leadership have so far been eliminated but Sinwar and his closest aides, including Mohammed Deif, head of the group’s military wing, and Sinwar’s brother, Mohammed, have remained elusive. They are believed to be using Israeli hostages as human shields.

According to The Times of Israel, Sinwar is no longer in Rafah, having fled to the tunnels around Khan Younis before the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) closed in on the area and took control of the Rafah Crossing last week.

Despite having endured over seven months of intense fighting, triggered by its invasion of Oct 7, Hamas continued to barrage Israel with rockets over the weekend. 

A community children’s park in Be’er Sheva was hit on Friday and three people were injured when a rocket struck a home in southern Israel on Saturday. 

Amid fears that many Hamas fighters are once again spreading north into areas previously declared defeated by the IDF, Israel said on Sunday it had deployed forces to Jabalya, north of Gaza City.

Several months ago, the IDF said the Hamas battalions in that area had been disbanded, reduced to little more than patches of guerrilla troops with no central leadership. However, the threat seems to be returning, with tunnels providing unimpeded movement for the Hamas forces.

According to the Left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the IDF has claimed unofficially that the absence of a clear diplomatic process in conjunction with a lack of defined objectives are affecting its military achievements in the war.

The war has led to the deaths of over 30,000 in Gaza, according to Hamas figures. Israel claims to have killed over 14,000 Hamas fighters.

Oct 7 was the worst single day for Jews since the Holocaust, with 1,200 mostly civilians killed and more than 250 taken hostage.

Palestinian sources in Gaza told Haaretz that Hamas and other factions are trying to intensify the fighting in the northern part of the strip, and in Gaza City in particular, through guerrilla tactics, undermining Israel’s efforts to drive Hamas south and take out its last remaining battalions.

US-led peace talks, with Egypt and Qatar as mediators, have so far failed, leading to the longest Gaza war since Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007.

This week, under growing pressure from Democrats and amid a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Joe Biden, the US president, said he will limit the transfer of weapons to Israel if it continues with plans to invade Rafah.

Mr Netanyahu defiantly responded that Israel “will stand alone” if necessary but, meanwhile, the IDF continues with only a limited operation in the area, targeting tunnels and terrorists, saying it has eliminated at least 50 so far.

Frank Lowenstein, a former US state department official and Middle East expert who helped lead Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in 2014, told the Washington Post: “Actually restricting more weapons deliveries is a step the Biden administration would probably prefer not to take. 

“As a result of that, they’re likely to keep the definition of the red line flexible, so they can decide based on the entirety of the circumstances whether Israel has crossed it or not.

“It seems like the brightest part of that pink line would be mass casualty events for civilians in Rafah and large-scale armoured incursions into the city.”