Last year was the deadliest ever for journalists working in the Palestinian territories, a Gaza-based watchdog said Thursday, months after a bloody war in the besieged enclave.

"2014 was a black year for freedom of the press in Palestine... and it was the worst and bloodiest," the Gaza Center for Press Freedom said in its annual report.

Hamas MPs in Gaza held an exclusive meeting on Wednesday apparently defying the Palestinian Authority and criticized president Mahmoud Abbas, in a further sign of a failing unity pact.

They were meeting for the first time since the April unity deal, which ostensibly put an end to years of infighting between Gaza rulers Hamas and Abbas's Fatah party.

Hundreds of Hamas employees began a sit-in in front of the headquarters of the Palestinian unity government in Gaza on Tuesday, vowing to stay until their salaries were paid.

"Our sit-in is peaceful and we do not want to destroy public property, but we will stay here until our members are recognized and their salaries paid," union spokesman Khalil al-Zayan said.

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo called for more international help for Gaza as he met Tuesday with families who lost their homes in last summer's war with Israel.

"The international community must act rapidly to rebuild Gaza," he told reporters at a U.N.-run school in Gaza City, one of a number of places hosting some 17,000 Gazans who were displaced during the war. 

Two Palestinian babies have died due to cold weather in the Gaza Strip, an official said Saturday, as winter storms lashed the region.

A two-month-old girl from the southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis died on Friday of "a pulmonary obstruction caused by the cold," health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said.

An explosion hit a Palestinian bank in the Gaza Strip, destroying an ATM, witnesses said, but there were no reports of injuries.

The Gaza interior ministry said an investigation had been opened into the blast on Friday night at a central Gaza City branch of the Bank of Palestine, which it blamed on "unidentified persons".

Living by candlelight with no electricity and reliant on sandbags to stop their ruined homes flooding, Gazans who survived last year's war are now struggling with a brutal winter storm.

As millions across Israel and the Palestinian territories hunkered down for the worst storm of the winter, freezing rain and gale-force winds battered the Gaza Strip where more than 100,000 homes were destroyed or damaged during the 50-day conflict. 

Militant group Hamas on Saturday condemned the fatal shooting by Egyptian border guards of what they said was a Palestinian minor on the Gaza border.

"We condemn the killing (Friday) of the child Zaki al-Houbi by Egyptian army gunfire on the borders, we consider what happened as a dangerous development and excessive use of force," the Islamist organisation said in a statement.

Around 50 Palestinian unity government officials, including eight ministers, arrived in Gaza Monday to kickstart reconstruction of the territory devastated by a 50-day war with Israel, officials told Agence France-Presse.

Muntasser survived an Israeli strike on Gaza this summer which killed his young brother and three cousins. Five months and a suicide attempt later the Palestinian boy remains haunted by the memory.

Just a week into the deadly 50-day July-August war, two Israeli missiles slammed into a beach in Gaza City where Muntasser Bakr, 11, was playing football with relatives.