Israeli forces on Thursday heavily bombed besieged Gaza as the centre of fierce combat against Hamas moves steadily south, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are sheltering.

The war that started with the Hamas attack of October 7 has devastated much of northern Gaza, while air and artillery strikes and house-to-house fighting have been heaviest in the southern city of Khan Younis.

The Israeli military says forces carried out an operation across multiple areas of the West Bank and arrested 21 Palestinians alleged to have helped finance Hamas.

In a statement Thursday, the military alleged the suspects were financial services providers who allegedly funded Hamas through digital currency and cash. Israeli media said those arrested worked as foreign exchange brokers.

Thousands massed Thursday in the Iranian capital for the funeral of senior Revolutionary Guards commander Razi Moussavi, three days after he was killed in what Tehran says was an Israeli strike.

The crowd in Tehran's central Imam Hossein square chanted "Death to Israel" and "Death to America".

Turkey has hit more than 70 sites allegedly linked to Kurdish groups in Syria and northern Iraq during airstrikes launched this week in retaliation for the deaths of 12 Turkish soldiers in Iraq, the defense minister said Wednesday.

At least 59 Kurdish militants were killed in the strikes as well as in land clashes, Yasar Guler said in a video message to top military officials which was posted on X, formerly Twitter.

"A house on the beach is not a dream!" The advertising slogan by an Israeli settlement developer is music to the ears of former Gaza settlers yearning to return to the Palestinian territory after the war.

Nearly two decades after Israeli settlers pulled out of Gaza, the real estate developer Harey Zahav sparked controversy when it posted the slogan on social media in mid-December as Israel wages a war on Gaza.

Israel launched heavy strikes across central and southern Gaza overnight and into Wednesday after broadening its offensive against Hamas to more areas where the military had told Palestinians to seek shelter earlier in the war.

Residents reported heavy bombing in the built-up Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, in the southern city of Khan Younis and in the southern town of Rafah, areas where tens of thousands have sought refuge as much of northern Gaza was pounded to rubble.

The Hamas-run Gaza Strip's health ministry said Wednesday the death toll from the war with Israel had surged above 21,000, about two thirds of them women and children.

Israel again pounded Gaza with air strikes and shelling after its armed forces chief warned the war raging with Hamas since the October 7 attacks will last "many more months".

U.S. military forces have shot down more than a dozen attack drones and several missiles fired by Yemen-based Houthi rebels at shipping in the Red Sea, the Pentagon said .

"There was no damage to ships in the area or reported injuries," the Pentagon's Central Command said in a social media post, describing a barrage of 12 drones, three anti-ship ballistic missiles and two land-attack missiles over a period of 10 hours.

An Israeli operation in a Palestinian refugee camp in the north of the occupied West Bank left six people dead and several others wounded early Wednesday, according to the Palestinian ministry of health.

"Six martyrs killed by the occupation (Israel) and some who were seriously wounded were transported to the Thabet Thabet government hospital in Tulkarem," the ministry said in a short statement.

Explosions were heard off the coast of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula on Tuesday, state-linked media said, with witnesses reporting that they saw something fall into the Gulf of Aqaba.

Al Qahera News television, which has links to state intelligence, said the blasts occurred about two kilometers from the Egyptian seaside town of Dahab.