Rifts are emerging among top Israeli officials over the handling of the war against Hamas in Gaza. A member of the country's War Cabinet cast doubt over the strategy for releasing hostages, and the country's prime minister rejected the United States' calls to scale back its offensive.

Only a cease-fire deal can win the release of dozens of hostages still held by Islamic militants in Gaza, and claims they could be freed by other means was spreading "illusions," said former army chief Gadi Eisenkot, one of four members of the War Cabinet, in his first public statements on the course of the war.

Yemen's Houthi rebels claimed another attack on a U.S. ship early Friday, after the United States launched fresh strikes on rebel targets over their aggression towards vessels in and around the Red Sea.

While the Iran-backed rebels maintained they had struck the commercial vessel in the Gulf of Aden, the U.S. military later said the group's missiles had missed their mark.

Israel bombarded southern Gaza on Friday after it publicly sparred with its main ally the United States over the possibility of a Palestinian state, the creation of which Washington sees as the only pathway to a lasting peace.

Witnesses reported gunfire and air strikes early on Friday in Khan Yunis, the main city in the south of the Gaza Strip, where Israel says many members and leaders of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas are hiding.

The European Parliament on Thursday called for a "permanent ceasefire" in Gaza -- but on condition that all Israeli hostages are released immediately and Hamas dismantled.

Fighting has ravaged Gaza since Hamas' unprecedented October 7 attacks on Israel that allegedly resulted in the death of about 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed Shia al-Sudani on Thursday repeated his call for the U.S.-led international anti-jihadist coalition to depart his country amid soaring regional tensions over the Israel-Hamas war.

"The end of the international coalition mission is a necessity for the security and stability of Iraq," he said during a televised event at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The Israeli army says it intercepted a “suspicious aerial target” over the Red Sea near the southern city of Eilat on Thursday. There were no reports of casualties or damage, but the launch of the interceptor set off air raid sirens in the coastal city.

The military did not say whether the object was a drone or missile, or who may have fired it. The Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have fired drones and missiles at Israel in the past, but most have fallen short or were intercepted and shot down.

Palestinians are dying every day in Gaza's overwhelmed remaining hospitals which can't deal with the tens of thousands people hurt in Israeli's military offensive, a U.N. health emergency expert said Wednesday, while a doctor with the International Rescue Committee called the situation in Gaza's hospitals the most extreme she had ever seen.

The two health professionals, who recently left Gaza after weeks working in hospitals there, described overwhelmed doctors trying to save the lives of thousands of wounded people amid collapsing hospitals that have turned into impromptu refugee camps.

Normalizing ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia is a key element of ending the war with Hamas and a gamechanger for the entire Middle East, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said Thursday at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in the Swiss town of Davos.

"It's still delicate, it's fragile, and it will take a long time, but I think that it is actually an opportunity to move forward in the world and the region towards a better future," Herzog said.

An Israeli airstrike on a home killed 16 people, half of them children, in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, medics said early Thursday. The military continued to strike targets in areas of the besieged territory where it has told civilians to seek refuge.

There was meanwhile no word on whether medicines that entered the territory Wednesday as part of a deal brokered by France and Qatar had been distributed to dozens hostages with chronic illnesses who are being held by Hamas.

At least nine civilians, including two children, were killed Thursday in air strikes on Syria likely to have been carried out by Jordan against drug-traffickers, a monitor and media outlet reported.

The kingdom has tightened controls along its frontier with Syria in recent years and its armed forces occasionally announce operations to foil drug and weapon smuggling attempts from its war-torn neighbour.