Israel launched air strikes on Gaza Thursday and the war ground on, despite comments Sunday by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the "intense phase" of the conflict was nearing an end.

The Israeli military says a soldier was killed and 16 others were wounded during a military operation in the West Bank overnight. It said Thursday that an explosive device detonated in the area of the northern city of Jenin, which has seen frequent raids and gunbattles with militants in recent years.

There were no immediate reports of Palestinian casualties. Israel says it has arrested over 4,000 Palestinians in the West Bank since Hamas' Oct. 7 attack ignited the war in Gaza, including around 1,750 suspected of being Hamas members.

Children in sandals trudge through water contaminated with sewage and scale growing mounds of garbage in Gaza's crowded tent camps for displaced families. People relieve themselves in burlap-covered pits, with nowhere nearby to wash their hands.

In the stifling summer heat, Palestinians say the odor and filth surrounding them is just another inescapable reality of war — like pangs of hunger or sounds of bombing.

A ship traveling through the Red Sea on Thursday reported being hit in an attack likely carried out by Yemen's Houthi rebels, authorities said, the latest in the campaign targeting shipping over the Israel-Hamas war.

The ship issued a radio call off the coast of the rebel-held port city of Hodeida saying it had been struck, the private security firm Ambrey first reported. A warship in the area was responding to the attack, Ambrey said.

Israel and the United States said they have made progress toward resolving a rift over U.S. weapons shipments after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly accused President Joe Biden's administration of slowing down deliveries.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant met Wednesday top officials over three days in Washington as he voiced hope for quietly working through disagreements with Israel's vital ally, drawing an implicit contrast to Netanyahu's more confrontational approach.

Two people were killed in an Israeli strike on southern Syria on Wednesday, the official SANA news agency reported, citing a military source.

According to the NGO Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the strike targeted the service center of a foundation affiliated with pro-Iranian groups including Lebanon's Hezbollah.

Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin on Wednesday urged warring parties in the Middle East to accept "peace proposals," saying the region including Lebanon "doesn't need war."

"The Middle East is going through a critical moment," Parolin told a press conference in Beirut during a days-long visit to Lebanon.

The Paris appeals court ruled on Wednesday that an international arrest warrant for Syrian President Bashar Assad issued by France for alleged complicity in war crimes during Syria's civil war is valid and remains in place, lawyers said.

Jeanne Sulzer and Clemence Witt, lawyers who represented the plaintiffs and non-governmental organizations who filed the complaint against the Syrian president in France, hailed the decision as a historic judgment and "a giant step forward in the fight against impunity."

Fighting raged Wednesday between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants in Gaza's southern city of Rafah, witnesses said.

Israel's bombardment of the Gaza Strip however appeared to ease days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the "intense phase" of the war was nearing its end, and as his defense minister visited Washington for crisis talks.

With U.S. soldiers within shouting distance of Gaza's bombed-out coast, the American military is taking another stab at delivering aid to hungry Palestinians by sea.