Israel kept up its barrage of the Gaza Strip on Thursday despite intensifying international calls to reduce civilian casualties from its bombardment as a surge in deadly diseases sweeps through displaced residents.

Israel says its attacks on Gaza are aimed at annihilating Hamas, the group whose fighters stormed across the border fence from Gaza on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, and seizing 240 hostages.

Since then, Israel has laid much of the Palestinian enclave to waste. At least 18,608 people have been killed and 50,594 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza, according to Gaza's health ministry.

The vast majority of the population of 2.3 million has fled their homes, leaving them vulnerable to illnesses including gastroenteritis and Hepatitis A, Palestinian doctors and aid organisations say.

"What's happening is that people are fleeing, people are being displaced constantly, some of them are being displaced multiple times, many of them don't have the hygiene supplies that they need, many of them don't have the winter clothes," said Juliette Touma, director of communications at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

The coastal strip is now facing a public health disaster due to the collapse of its health system and the spread of disease, the U.N. humanitarian office said.

"We've got a textbook formula for epidemics and a public health disaster," said Lynn Hastings, the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

In central Rafah, in the south of the coastal enclave, 24 people were killed in an Israeli strike that hit two houses, Hamas media said early on Thursday. There was no immediate confirmation from the Palestinian health ministry.


White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who is visiting the region and will be in Israel on Thursday and Friday, would discuss with the Israelis the need to be more precise with their strikes against Hamas targets, spokesperson John Kirby told reporters.

Nearly half of the air-to-ground munitions that Israel has used in Gaza in its war with Hamas since Oct. 7 have been unguided, otherwise known as "dumb bombs," according to a new U.S. intelligence assessment reported by CNN.

The news outlet said the assessment was compiled by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and described to CNN by three sources who have seen it.

About 40-45% of the 29,000 air-to-ground munitions Israel has used have been unguided and the rest have been precision-guided munitions, the CNN report added.

TANKER ATTACKED

Fears of the conflict spreading in a volatile region remain.

A tanker in the Red Sea off Yemen's coast was fired on by gunmen in a speedboat and targeted with missiles, maritime sources said on Wednesday. It is the latest incident to threaten the vital shipping lane after Yemeni Houthi forces, which are backed by Iran, warned ships not to travel to Israel.

The cost of the Israel-Hamas war to neighbours Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan in terms of loss of GDP may amount to $10.3 billion or 2.3%, and might double if the conflict lasts six more months, a study commissioned by the U.N. Development Programme said.

The Biden administration is delaying the sale to Israel of more than 20,000 U.S.-made rifles over concerns about increasing attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank, two sources familiar with the matter said.

Some 271 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli security forces, including 69 children, in the occupied West Bank this year, the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency said.

At least 288 displaced people in shelters run by the agency have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, the agency added in a post on X.

The number of Israeli soldiers killed in the ground offensive has reached 115, and more than 600 wounded, according to an Israeli military website.

"Your heroism, and of those who unfortunately fell and we couldn’t bring them to this state of rehabilitation, are the light which repels the darkness, and in this room there is so much light," Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, chief of Israel's General Staff, told injured soldiers during a ceremony for the Jewish festival of Hanukkah in Ramat Gan.