A U.N. body on Friday slammed a lack of action over Palestinian refugees, after nine Palestinians were reported to be among 50 migrants who drowned off Sicily's coast.

The latest migrant drowning tragedy in the Mediterranean claimed several dozen lives, the International Organization for Migration has said, after a boat capsized with more than 150 people on board on March 5.

The Israeli army has launched an investigation into the shelling of a U.N. school in the Gaza Strip while dismissing several other allegations of misconduct during a bloody war last July-August.

The Palestinians are threatening Israel with action at the International Criminal Court (ICC) over alleged war crimes during the conflict, a move that could also open up the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas which runs Gaza to investigation.

Egypt arrested nine Palestinian fishermen off the coast of the Gaza Strip Friday, the fishing union said, amid tense relations between Cairo and Gaza's Islamist rulers Hamas.

"The Egyptian navy arrested nine fishermen while they were out fishing on the line between Gaza and Egypt," union official Nizar Ayesh told AFP.

Israeli authorities allowed 1,000 tons of cement paid for by Qatar to enter the devastated Gaza Strip on Thursday, officials said, in the first serious step towards rebuilding the territory.

A 50-day war last summer between Israel and Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the Palestinian territory, decimated entire neighborhoods across Gaza and left 100,000 people homeless.

Qatar on Tuesday launched a project to build 1,000 homes in the Gaza Strip to house Palestinians displaced by last summer's war between Hamas and Israel.

The Gulf state, which hosts the exiled leadership of Gaza's Islamist rulers, was the largest single donor at an October conference in Cairo to raise funds to help rebuild the blockaded territory.

U.N. investigators tasked with probing the 50-day war in Gaza last year asked Monday to postpone their report to allow time to adjust after the head of the team quit under Israeli pressure.

The Commission of Inquiry on the 2014 Gaza conflict had been scheduled to present its findings to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva on March 23.

A Palestinian fisherman was shot dead by Israeli forces on Saturday off the coast of the Gaza Strip, a spokesman for the Palestinian health services said.

The 32-year-old died in hospital in Gaza City after he and two other fishermen in the same boat were fired upon by the Israeli navy.

In a tunnel dug deep underneath the besieged Gaza Strip, masked gunmen from Islamic Jihad ferry rockets and mortars back and forth, preparing for the next conflict with Israel.

Six months ago, the Palestinian militant group emerged battered and bruised from a 50-day conflict with Israel, where it fought alongside fellow Islamist movement Hamas, which controls Gaza.

An ultra-Orthodox Jewish prohibition on agricultural work every seventh year could be a boon to struggling farmers in the Gaza Strip, Israel's defense ministry announced Thursday.

Israel will import produce from the besieged Palestinian territory for the first time in seven years, the body responsible for coordinating Israeli government activity in the Palestinian territories (COGAT) said.

The Gaza Strip's sole power plant has halted production, the Hamas-run energy authority said Thursday, following a dispute with the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority over fuel tax.

Hamas pays the PA for fuel imported to besieged Gaza, but is short of cash and had been unable to cover the additional costs in tax.