Washington has arranged for the 17 doctors to leave through the Kerem Shalom crossing between the blockaded Palestinian territory and Israel, a US official familiar with the matter told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on condition of anonymity.

"A number of the American doctors who have been trapped in Gaza (...) have safely departed with the assistance of the US Embassy in Jerusalem," a State Department spokesman said earlier.

"We have been in close contact with the organizations that these American doctors are affiliated with," as well as their families, he added.

A source close to the matter also said that three other American doctors who were part of a volunteer medical mission had opted to stay, despite the uncertainty over future possibilities of leaving Gaza.

Since the Israeli army moved into the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing on May 7, the Israelis and Egyptians have blamed each other for the closure of the crossing, a crucial entry point for aid, which has also been severely restricted at the Israeli crossings of Kerem Shalom and Erez.

Israel has stepped up its attacks on Rafah in recent days, in what Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant described as a "pinpoint operation" against Hamas "battalions."

The city was home to 1.4 million people before the latest offensive, the vast majority of whom are displaced from other parts of the Palestinian enclave.

At least 630,000 Palestinians have fled their homes in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah in the past 12 days because of the Israeli military offensive, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said Monday.

Israel launched a war on the Gaza Strip on July 8 last year with the declared aim of "eradicating" the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas after it carried out an unprecedented barrage of rocket attacks on Israeli territory hours earlier, killing more than 1,170 people, the vast majority of them civilians.

The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) -- which has controlled Gaza since 2007 and is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel -- has also taken more than 250 hostages, 125 of whom are still being held while 37 have died in captivity, according to the latest figures from the Israeli army.

The war, now in its 224th day and threatening to spread throughout the Middle East, has so far killed more than 35,300 people in the Gaza Strip and wounded 79,000, with around 10,000 missing, presumed buried in the rubble, the vast majority of them civilians, according to the latest figures from local authorities.

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