Bombing continued across Gaza as the United Nations warned Israel's war with militant group Hamas, now approaching its fourth month, had made the territory "uninhabitable".
With much of Gaza already reduced to rubble, air strikes hit the southern cities of Khan Yunis and Rafah as well as parts of central Gaza, AFP correspondents reported.
The Israeli army said its forces had "struck over 100 targets" across Gaza over the previous 24 hours, including military positions, rocket launch sites and weapons depots.
The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said it had recorded 162 deaths over the same period.
Israel launched its offensive in Gaza following the 7 October attack by Hamas gunmen who killed some 1,200 people in Israel and took around 240 into captivity as hostages, according to Israeli estimates.
Israel's offensive has killed more than 22,600 people, according to Palestinian health authorities, forced most of the population out of their homes and reduced much of Gaza to rubble.
A fighter jet bombed the central area of Bureij overnight, killing "an armed terrorist cell", the army said, after what it described as an attempted attack on an Israeli tank.
And "a number" of Palestinian militants were killed in clashes in Khan Yunis, a city that has become a major battleground, the army said.
Troops also uncovered tunnels under the Blue Beach Hotel in northern Gaza which had been used "by terrorists as shelter from where they planned and executed attacks".
Civilian deaths have soared during the conflict and the UN has warned of a humanitarian crisis that has left hundreds of thousands displaced, facing famine and disease.
"Gaza has simply become uninhabitable," UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said.
"Its people are witnessing daily threats to their very existence - while the world watches on," he said in a statement.
US and Europe start new push to quell Gaza war
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Europe's senior diplomat Josep Borrell have begun a new diplomatic push to stop spillover from the Gaza war into Israeli-occupied West Bank, Lebanon and Red Sea shipping lanes.
Israel, which says it has killed 8,000 militants since the October attack by Hamas, has announced a more targeted approach under global pressure to limit civilian casualties.
But Gazans said Israeli planes and tanks had intensified attacks overnight on densely populated Al-Maghazi, Al-Bureij and Al-Nusseirat in the centre of the coastal strip.
"The Israeli government claims democracy and humanity, but is inhumane," Abdel Razek Abu Sinjar said as he cried over the shrouded bodies of his wife and children killed in a strike on his house in Rafah on the border with Egypt.
In Jabalia in northern Gaza, people picked their way through ruined streets filled with sewage and garbage, video showed. Hunger and deadly diseases are spreading.
West Bank deaths mount
Israel's humanitarian liaison office COGAT said the humanitarian situation was stabilising and denied blocking water purifiers, medical supplies and tent poles as stated by sources in Gaza and in an Egyptian Red Crescent document.
The military said it had struck more than 100 targets in Gaza in the past 24 hours, killing gunmen who tried to attack a tank in Al-Bureij and others in Khan Younis, where Hamas' military wing said it had killed some troops.
The war in Hamas-run Gaza has stoked violence in the West Bank, which is governed by its rival Fatah and is another territory where Palestinian hopes for statehood have been dashed since the last US-mediated talks on a solution to the decades-long conflict in 2014.
The Palestinian health ministry said a 17-year-old was killed and four other Palestinians wounded by Israeli army gunfire in the West Bank town of Beit Rima.
Israel's military said troops shot at Palestinians who threw petrol bombs.
Some 300 Palestinians have died there since the war erupted, the United Nations has said.
Mr Blinken is due to visit the West Bank during his week-long tour starting in Turkey, which has offered to mediate.
He will also visit Israel, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
"It is in no one's interest, not Israel's, not the region's, not the world's, for this conflict to spread beyond Gaza," State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.
Mr Borrell, the EU foreign policy chief, was due in Lebanon.
Iranian backing
Hamas, which is sworn to Israel's destruction, is backed by Iran. Other Iranian-backed militants have hit US forces in Iraq and Syria and struck Israel from Lebanon in what they call revenge for Israel's avowed attempt to eliminate the Palestinian Islamist movement.
The US offered up to $10 million (€9.1m) for information on Hamas sponsors or anything leading to the disruption of the group's financial mechanisms.
Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh said the US should focus on ending aggression towards Palestinians and occupation of their land.
"We hope that Mr Blinken learned lessons from the past three months and realized the extent of the mistakes the US has made by blindly supporting the Zionist occupation and believing its lies, which resulted in unprecedented massacres and war crimes against our people in Gaza," he said in a speech.
The leader of Lebanon's powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, Hassan Nasrallah, said the militia had conducted around 670 military operations on the border with Israel since 8 October, destroying many Israeli military vehicles.
The Iran-aligned Houthis who control much of Yemen have fired on commercial vessels in the Red Sea since 19 November, forcing them to take longer routes in a blow to global trade.
Israel has listed 175 soldiers as killed in action since its offensive began.
Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has said the next phase would include raids in the north to demolish tunnels and a focus in the south on rescuing some 132 Israeli hostages remaining.
A 25th hostage had been declared dead, a government spokesperson said.
