Human Rights Watch says the "massive" and "deliberate" forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza carried out by Israeli forces equates to war crimes and crimes against humanity, in a new report published Thursday.

Residents said Israeli forces besieged shelters housing displaced families and the remaining population, which some estimated at a few thousand, ordering them to head south through a checkpoint separating two towns and a refugee camp in the north from Gaza City.

Israeli airstrikes killed at least 46 people in the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours, including 11 at a makeshift cafeteria in an Israeli-declared humanitarian zone, medics said. In Lebanon, warplanes struck Beirut's southern suburbs and killed 18 people elsewhere in the country on Tuesday.