Palestinian militants have a command center at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, the White House said Tuesday, backing up a key Israeli justification for military moves on the facility.

Hamas quickly slammed the comments, saying that Washington's statement was enabling Israel "to commit further brutal massacres targeting hospitals" in Gaza.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad operate a "command and control node from Al-Shifa in Gaza City," National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters, citing US intelligence sources.

With scores of Palestinians killed across the occupied West Bank in recent weeks, rights groups have accused Israel of giving soldiers free rein to shoot on site while war rages in Gaza.

In just over five weeks since the war between Israel and Hamas erupted on October 7, at least 190 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian Authority's health ministry.

The figure is almost as high as the ministry's toll of 208 dead for the first nine months of the year up to the start of the war.

Tens of thousands packed a rally in Washington on Tuesday to support Israel and to condemn anti-Semitism in a riposte to weeks of largely pro-Palestinian demonstrations across a deeply divided United States.

With senior members of Congress addressing the event on the National Mall, near the Capitol, the crowd rapidly swelled with people wearing the white and blue colors of Israel.

At a Gaza camp for those forced to leave their homes by the war between Israel and Hamas, Ayman al-Jueidi tried to shift the pooling rainwater weighing down his makeshift shelter.

As he went along, the Palestinian stopped to catch a few drops in his mouth and splash a little on himself.

Like many others caught in the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza, he had not showered for days.

The Red Cross has not met any hostage held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said Tuesday after meeting the organisation's head in Geneva.

"Until today, none of our hostages met the Red Cross," Cohen told reporters. "We don't have any proof of life."

Cohen and Israel's Health Minister Uriel Menachem Buso met with Mirjana Spoljaric, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to discuss the war that erupted after the October 7 Hamas attacks.

Israel must respect "the sanctity of hospitals" in Gaza and allow them to be places of safety during its offensive in the Palestinian territory, a UK foreign minister said on Tuesday.

"All parties to a conflict must afford civilians the protection that is their right under international law," Andrew Mitchell, a minister in Britain's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), told members of parliament.

"That includes respecting the sanctity of hospitals so that doctors can continue to care for the sick and injured," he added.

With eyes wide open and his tiny fists clenched tightly, Mohammed Kullab is just a few days old, having started life in Gaza amid the chaos of the Israel-Hamas war.

"Nobody should be born in such circumstances," sighed his mother Fadwa Kullab, who has sought shelter at a UN school building in Gaza's southern city of Rafah.

Kullab now has seven children but said Mohammed's "birth was the most difficult experience of my life".

Like other mothers of newborns AFP spoke to in Gaza, she said her baby son had been refusing her breast milk.

The World Health Organization insisted Tuesday that moving the most vulnerable patients from Gaza's Al-Shifa hospital has become an "impossible task".

The Israeli mission in Geneva had at the weekend slammed the WHO, the UN humanitarian agency OCHA and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for criticising Israel's month-long call for civilians and patients to leave the Palestinian enclave's main hospital.

Israel has faced growing international pressure over its offensive the since the October 7 Hamas attacks.

The world is "failing to get a grip" on climate change, the UN warned Tuesday, as an assessment of current climate pledges shows only minor progress on reducing emissions this decade.

In a report released just weeks before high-stakes climate negotiations, the United Nations climate change organisation said the world was failing to act with sufficient urgency to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Israeli forces stormed Gaza's largest hospital Wednesday, targeting what they believe is a Hamas command centre housed among thousands of ailing and sheltering civilians.

Israeli and Palestinian officials said military operations were taking place at Gaza City's Al-Shifa hospital -- the focal point of days of deadly fighting and nearby aerial bombardments.