Fighting raged across Gaza and Israeli units raided the West Bank on Sunday after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has faced growing domestic criticism, rejected calls for post-war "Palestinian sovereignty".

Alongside fierce fighting in southern Gaza and across the besieged territory, strikes in Syria and Iraq raised fears of a wider conflagration.

Hamas-run Gaza's health ministry reported at least 165 people killed over the previous 24 hours -- more than double Friday's toll.

The US military carried out another round of strikes against Yemen's Huthi rebels on Friday, targeting missile launchers that were preparing for attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, the White House said.

Washington is seeking to reduce the Iran-backed Huthis' military capabilities, but the Yemeni rebels are still able to continue their attacks despite a week of strikes, and they have vowed that they will keep targeting merchant vessels.

US President Joe Biden said Friday it was still possible Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could agree to some form of Palestinian state, after the two leaders spoke for the first time in nearly a month amid tensions over the Gaza war.

Their call came a day after Netanyahu said he opposes allowing Palestinian sovereignty in the wake of the conflict with Hamas, deepening Israeli divisions with key backer Washington over the conduct of Israel's offensive and what comes next.

A top official from Lebanon's Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah on Friday warned Israel would "receive a real slap in the face" if it expanded the conflict along the Lebanon-Israel border.

Since the surprise October 7 attack by Hamas on southern Israel, there have been near daily exchanges of cross-border fire between the Israeli army and Hezbollah, an ally of the Palestinian militants.

Israel has repeatedly bombarded border villages, with the violence killing more than 195 people in Lebanon, including at least 142 Hezbollah fighters, according to an AFP tally.

The SUVs roll to a halt, the pupils run from the room and hop in, the parents speed away -- just like a normal school run, only this was in a bomb shelter.

It's been this way in Jish, an Israeli village with a majority Christian population a stone's throw from the Lebanon border, since the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel.

Israel's retaliatory strikes and ground invasion of Gaza prompted Lebanese Hezbollah to fire repeatedly at Israel.

Palestinians held funerals on Friday and assessed the damage of a days-long Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank, where violence has surged since war erupted in Gaza.

Residents gathered beside seven bodies in a hospital in Tulkarem as the father of one of the dead wept in the corner, an AFP photographer said.

Israeli forces withdrew Friday after raiding the Tulkarem area for almost two days, during which the military said troops killed "at least eight terrorists".

The United Nations said Friday that thousands of babies had been born in conditions "beyond belief" in Gaza since the war there erupted more than three months ago.

UNICEF spokeswoman Tess Ingram, back from a recent visit to the Gaza Strip, described mothers bleeding to death and one nurse who had performed emergency caesareans on six dead women.

Nearly 20,000 babies have been born into the war that began after the Hamas attacks inside Israel on October 7, according to UNICEF, the UN children's agency.

"Good morning, madame. This is the bank calling. Are you at home?"

Since the Israel-Hamas war broke out more than three months ago, residents of southern Lebanon have been receiving strange phone calls from Lebanese numbers and from people speaking in Lebanese accents.

The voices on the other end may claim to be conducting a survey, distributing aid, or calling from a public body.

But the callers ask about families and their whereabouts, just before towns or homes come under Israeli attack, residents told AFP.

Pakistan and Iran "agreed to de-escalate" tensions Friday, Islamabad said, after trading deadly airstrikes on militant targets in each other's territory this week.

The rare military actions in the porous border region of Baluchistan -- split between the two nations -- had stoked regional tensions already enflamed by the Israel-Hamas war.

Iran carried out a missile and drone attack on what it called "terrorist" targets in Pakistan on Tuesday night, with Pakistan in turn striking militant targets inside Iran on Thursday.

Israel pressed its southward offensive against Hamas in Gaza on Friday as US President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held their first call in weeks amid tensions over post-war plans.

At Al-Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis, Gaza's main southern city, a child with a bloodied face cried on a gurney. Ambulances arrived with the injured and the dead while automatic weapons fire sounded beyond.

An orange fireball flashed above rooftops and an AFP journalist saw plumes of dark smoke towering above the city.