Israel-Gaza updates: 300,000 have fled Rafah, UN agency says

As the Israeli military steps up attacks in the southern Gaza enclave of Rafah in preparation for an apparent large-scale incursion, about 80,000 people have now fled, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, the U.N. relief agency in Gaza.

"The toll on these families is unbearable. Nowhere is safe," UNRWA said in a post on social media.

About 1.5 million people were living in Rafah recently after Israel directed people in the north to flee south during its initial incursion into the Gaza Strip. The U.S. has warned Israel against a large-scale attack in Rafah unless an evacuation plan can be carried out first.

The first ship carrying aid for Gaza that will be offloaded at the floating military pier assembled off of Gaza has left Cyprus, according to the Pentagon.

The plan is for the aid aboard the M/V Sagamore to be staged onto the military ship M/V Roy P. Benavidez so that it can then be loaded onto trucks at a floating dock and then driven ashore off the floating pier. That dock and pier are fully assembled but are not currently off Gaza.

The dock and pier had to be moved to calmer waters off Ashdod, Israel, but once the mooring point in Gaza stabilizes they’ll be moved into position to begin the opening of the maritime corridor for aid for Gaza.

-ABC News' Luis Martinez and Anne Flaherty

Hamas operatives fired "mortar shells" toward the "engineering work area" where Israel Defense Forces troops are conducting preparations for the U.S. military's humanitarian pier near Gaza earlier Wednesday, the IDF said in a response to an inquiry from ABC News.

The U.S. military began building the pier off the coast of Gaza last month to establish a maritime corridor to bring humanitarian aid into Gaza.

-ABC News Dana Savir

President Joe Biden said on CNN Wednesday that American bombs have been used to kill civilians in Gaza and doubled down on the administration's plan to withhold weapons that Israel could use in a Rafah invasion.

Following the news that the U.S. has paused a munitions shipment to Israel, CNN anchor Erin Burnett asked whether any of the U.S. bombs sent to Israel have been used to kill civilians in Gaza.

"Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers," Biden responded.

"I made it clear that if they go into Rafah -- they haven't gone in Rafah yet -- if they go into Rafah, I'm not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities, that deal with that problem," he continued.

Biden said the U.S. will "continue to make sure Israel is secure in terms of Iron Dome and their ability to respond to attacks that came out of the Middle East recently."

"But it's, it's just wrong," he said. "We're not going to -- we're not going to supply the weapons and artillery shells used, that have been used."

Burnett also sought to nail down Biden's view of what Israel is doing in Rafah right now, and if the president believes that qualifies as a major ground invasion.

"No, they haven't gone into the population centers," he said. "What they did is right on the border. And it's causing problems with, right now in terms of -- with Egypt, which I've worked very hard to make sure we have a relationship and help."

"But I've made it clear to Bibi and the war cabinet, they're not going to get our support, if in fact they go in these population centers," he continued.

-ABC News' Molly Nagle