Israeli forces have pummelled central Gaza by land, sea and air and a telecommunications outage in much of the enclave hit efforts to reach Palestinian casualties.
Reflecting Israeli resolve to wipe out Hamas despite growing global calls for a ceasefire, Israel's Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said the 11-week-old war would last "many months" and there were no "magic solutions" or "shortcuts".
In central Gaza's Al-Maghazi district, five Palestinians were killed in one air strike, medics said on Wednesday, while to the north in Gaza City health officials said the bodies of seven Palestinians killed overnight arrived at Al Shifa Hospital.
Residents also reported heavy fighting east and north of Al-Bureij district and in the nearby village of Juhr Ad-Deek, where they said Israeli tanks are stationed.
Israel's military on Wednesday reported three more soldiers killed in action in Gaza, bringing total military losses in the enclave since ground operations began on October 20 to 166.
Nearly 21,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli strikes, according to Gaza's health ministry.
The World Health Organisation released footage taken mostly on Monday and Tuesday at several Gaza hospitals, with WHO emergency medical team co-ordinator Sean Casey saying Gaza's health capacity was 20 per cent of what it was 80 days ago.
"There's blood everywhere in these hospitals at the moment," said Casey, adding that nowhere in Gaza was safe.
"We're seeing almost only trauma cases come through the door and at a scale that's quite difficult to believe, it’s a bloodbath as we said before, it's carnage.”
The Israeli military said it was continuing to strike what it called terror targets in Gaza, at one point using its navy to hit suspects deemed to pose a threat to ground troops.
In the Shejaia district of Gaza City an Israeli attack on militant fighters on foot caused secondary explosions, indicating the area was rigged with explosives to attack soldiers, a military statement said.
The Palestinian Red Crescent reported a complete loss of communication with its teams working in the Gaza Strip due to the disruption of telecommunications and internet services.
It said in a statement that the VHF radio communication network, the sole means of communication during the blackout, sustained damage from artillery shelling that hit part of its headquarters in Khan Younis, posing a challenge for emergency medical teams trying to reach the wounded and injured.
"We are gravely concerned about the continued bombardment of Middle Gaza by Israeli forces, which has claimed more than 100 Palestinian lives since Christmas Eve," UN Human Rights Office spokesperson Seif Magango said on Tuesday.
Since Hamas killed 1200 people and captured 240 hostages on October 7 in the deadliest day in Israeli history, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has responded with an assault that has laid much of Hamas-ruled Gaza to waste.
As well as the reported 21,000 Palestinian dead, thousands more are feared to be buried under rubble. Nearly all the enclave's 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes, many several times.
Six people were killed in the West Bank city of Tulkarm in an Israeli raid, the Palestinian health ministry said.
In Washington, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Israel's Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer discussed planning for what happens when the war ends, including governance and security in Gaza.
The two also discussed efforts to bring home the remaining hostages and a transition to a different phase of the war to focus on Hamas leaders when they met on Tuesday, a US official said.
There are growing signs the conflict is spreading.
Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi militia claimed responsibility for a missile attack on Tuesday on a container ship in the Red Sea and for an attempt to attack Israel with drones. The attacks are a response to Israel's assault on Gaza, the militia says.
An Israeli airstrike killed a senior leader of Iran's Revolutionary Guards in Syria on Monday.
