Gaza is becoming a "graveyard for children," UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has said, amplifying demands for a ceasefire in the enclave where Palestinian health authorities said the death toll from Israeli strikes had exceeded 10,000, including more than 4,000 children.
"Ground operations by the Israel Defence Forces and continued bombardment are hitting civilians, hospitals, refugee camps, mosques, churches and UN facilities, including shelters. No one is safe," Mr Guterres told reporters.
"At the same time, Hamas and other militants use civilians as human shields and continue to launch rockets indiscriminately towards Israel," he said, calling for an immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.
UN agency leaders earlier demanded a humanitarian ceasefire nearly a month into Gaza's war, saying "enough is enough".
The health ministry in the Hamas-controlled enclave said at least 10,022 people in Gaza have since been killed, including 4,104 children.
Israel has rebuffed mounting international pressure for a ceasefire, saying hostages taken by Hamas militants during their rampage in southern Israel on 7 October should be released first.
"An entire population is besieged and under attack, denied access to the essentials for survival, bombed in their homes, shelters, hospitals and places of worship. This is unacceptable," UN chiefs said in a joint statement.
"We need an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. It's been 30 days. Enough is enough. This must stop now," it added.
The 18 signatories include the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, World Health Organization head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and UN aid chief Martin Griffiths.
The UN agency chiefs added that 88 UN relief workers have been killed so far in the Israel-Hamas war.
It comes as Israeli fighter jets struck 450 Hamas targets in Gaza and troops seized a militant compound in the past 24 hours, the Israel Defence Forces said, while the Palestinian enclave's health ministry said the airstrikes killed dozens of people.
The total dead included 292 killed in the overnight barrage which hit two paediatric hospitals and Gaza's only psychiatric hospital, the ministry said.
"These are massacres. They destroyed three houses over the heads of their inhabitants - women and children," Mahmud Meshmesh, resident of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, told AFP.
"We have already taken 40 bodies out of the rubble," he said as crowds prayed around corpses wrapped in white shrouds.
A Reuters journalist in Gaza said the overnight bombardment by air, ground and sea was one of the most intense since Israel began its offensive following the 7 October attack in which Hamas killed 1,400 people and seized more than 240 hostages.
Israel, which says its forces have encircled Gaza City, faces mounting pressure over civilian casualties. A US diplomatic push in the region is intended to reduce risks of the conflict escalating.
The health ministry in Gaza said dozens of people were killed by the Israeli air strikes in Gaza City and further south in Gaza neighbourhoods such as Zawaida and Deir Al-Balah.
Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV quoted medical sources as saying at least 75 Palestinians were killed and 106 hurt in the attacks.
Palestinian health officials said eight people were killed in an air strike overnight on Gaza City's Rantissi cancer htuospital. Israel's military said it was looking into the report.
The Israeli army said its strikes hit "tunnels, terrorists, military compounds, observation posts, and anti-tank missile launch posts".
Ground troops killed several Hamas fighters while taking a militant compound containing observation posts, training areas and underground tunnels, it said.
Gaza border officials said the Rafah crossing has resumed operations to allow foreign passport holders and critically wounded Palestinians into Egypt.
Hundreds of foreign nationals and wounded were allowed to leave Gaza for Egypt last week but no such exits have been reported since 3 November.
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Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told his US counterpart Antony Blinken in a meeting in Ankara that a ceasefire needed to be declared urgently in Gaza, a Turkish foreign ministry source said.
Mr Blinken made an unannounced visit to the West Bank yesterday to meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who joined international calls for an immediate ceasefire.
Mr Blinken reiterated U.S. concerns that a ceasefire could aid Hamas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ruled one out for now.
US CIA Director William Burns was also set to visit Israel today to discuss the war and intelligence with officials, the New York Times reported.
Mr Burns also will make stops in other regional states, it quoted an unnamed US official as saying.
The CIA did not respond to Reuters' request for comment.
Israel said 31 soldiers had been killed since it began expanded ground operations in Gaza on 27 October, fighting thousands of Hamas fighters who believe they can hold off Israel's advance from a warren of tunnels under the enclave.
Israel has called on civilians in north Gaza - the heart of Hamas' forces - to evacuate for their own safety and announced that it would enable free passage on a southbound highway for four hours every day.
However, U.N. monitoring showed that less than 2,000 did so yesterday, citing fear, heavy damage to roads and lack of information due to limited communications, a UN humanitarian briefing said.
Lieutenant-Colonel Jonathan Conricus, an Israeli military spokesperson, showed reporters what he said was aerial footage of Hamas tunnels and rocket sites at two hospitals in northern Gaza, saying this showed Israel was not responsible for "what's happening now in northern Gaza".
A Hamas statement called on UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to form a committee to visit Gaza hospitals to verify Israel's "false narrative" that Hamas uses hospitals as sites.
On average, a child is killed and two are injured every 10minutes during the war, the UN relief agency for Palestinians said.
The agency's shelters in south Gaza are overcrowded and unable to take new arrivals, and many displaced people are sleeping in the streets, the UN humanitarian office said.
Jordanian air force drops medical aid to field hospital in Gaza
Jordan's air force air-dropped urgent medical aid to the Jordanian field hospital in Gaza early this morning, according to a post on X from Jordan's king and reports in state media.
Telecoms provider Paltel said services were resuming after they were disconnected from the Israeli side yesterday.
US Central Command, which covers the Middle East, said on X that an Ohio-class nuclear missile submarine had arrived in the region - an unusual announcement of a nuclear submarine's position that was seen by some analysts as a message to Iran, an Israeli foe.
The Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told state TV the US has sent a message.
to Iran in the past three days saying it sought a ceasefire in Gaza, but in practice Iran had seen only US "support of genocide in Gaza".
People searched for victims or survivors at the Maghazi refugee camp in Gaza, where the health ministry said Israeli forces had killed at least 47 people in strikes early yesterday.
"All night I and the other men were trying to pick the dead from the rubble. We got children, dismembered, torn-apart flesh," said Saeed al-Nejma, 53.
Asked for comment, the IDF said they were gathering details.
In a separate attack, 21 Palestinians from one family were killed in strikes, the health ministry said. The IDF declined to comment.
Reuters could not independently verify these accounts.
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"We demand that you stop them from committing these crimes immediately," Mr Abbas told Mr Blinken, urging an "immediate ceasefire" from Israel.
Palestinians were facing a war of "genocide and destruction", news agency WAFA quoted Mr Abbas as saying.
The war has inflamed Israeli-Palestinian violence elsewhere.
In East Jerusalem, Israeli police said a 16-year-old Palestinian stabbed and wounded two officers before being shot dead.
In the occupied West Bank, another territory where Palestinians seek statehood, medics said a Palestinian was killed and three others wounded by Israeli army fire. A military spokesperson had no immediate comment on that incident.
Tensions increased with Lebanon after an Israeli strike on a car in the south of the country killed three children and their grandmother, Lebanese authorities said.
Israel's military said it had attacked "terrorist targets of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon" in response to a missile attack against tanks that killed an Israeli citizen.
Hezbollah said it responded by firing rockets at Kiryat Shmona town in northern Israel. The group said it would never tolerate attacks on civilians and its response would be "firm and strong".
