Israel has pounded the length of the Gaza Strip, killing families in their homes even as the US sent an envoy to encourage its ally to guard better against civilian casualties in its war against Hamas militants.

The more than two-month-old war is raging across the entire Palestinian enclave, causing a humanitarian catastrophe, with little end in sight.

“It will last more than several months – but we will win and we will destroy them,” Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told visiting White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

In Rafah, jammed with people in makeshift tents on Gaza’s southern edge, people wept at a morgue near bodies wrapped in bloodied shrouds.

Residents picked forlornly through the rubble of the adjacent homes of the Abu Dhbaa and Ashour families where Gaza health authorities said 26 people had been killed.

Neighbour Fadel Shabaan had rushed to the area after the bombing.

“It was difficult because of the dust and people’s screams,” he said.

“This is a safe camp, there is nothing here, the children play football in the street.”

With Europe on alert for Islamist attacks in response to the war, German prosecutors said four Hamas members were detained in Berlin and the Netherlands on suspicion of planning attacks on Jewish institutions.

Israel also said that seven people working for Hamas had been arrested in Denmark for planning an attack on civilians.

In further possible international fallout from the war, Danish company Maersk said a cargo ship was targeted by a missile off Yemen.

And maritime security company Ambrey said a Malta-flagged, Bulgarian-owned bulk carrier was reportedly boarded in the Arabian Sea near the Yemeni island of Socotra.

Yemen’s Houthi group has attacked ships and fired drones and missiles at Israel since the Gaza war began.

It made no comment on Thursday’s reports.

With the war’s consequences escalating fast, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has so far brushed off appeals for a ceasefire.

The US has provided diplomatic cover for its longstanding ally but expressed increasing alarm, with President Joe Biden calling Israeli bombing “indiscriminate”.

Sullivan, who met Netanyahu, planned to discuss with the Israelis the need to be more accurate in strikes, spokesman John Kirby said.

Up to 45 per cent of the 29,000 air-to-ground munitions that Israel has dropped on Gaza since October 7 have been unguided “dumb bombs” according to a US intelligence assessment reported by CNN.

Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter, a member of Israel’s security cabinet and Netanyahu’s Likud party, rejected Biden’s characterisation of Israel’s strikes as indiscriminate.

“There is no such thing as ‘dumb bombs’. Some bombs are more accurate, some bombs are less accurate. What we have is mostly pilots who are precise,” he told Army Radio, saying that only militants were targeted.

Israel launched its campaign in retaliation for a rampage by Hamas whose fighters killed 1200 Israelis and seized 240 hostages in a cross-border raid on October 7.

Since then, Israeli forces have besieged the coastal strip and laid much of it to waste, with nearly 19,000 people confirmed dead, according to Palestinian health officials, and thousands more feared buried under the rubble.

Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been forced from their homes, many several times.

The United Nations Palestinian refugee agency said hungry people were stopping trucks and eating food aid immediately.

“We meet more and more people who haven’t eaten for one, two or three days,” its head Philippe Lazzarini said in Geneva.

People in Gaza described begging for bread, paying 50 times more than usual for a single can of beans and slaughtering a donkey to feed a large family.

Israel has extended its ground campaign from the north to the south this month.

In the main southern city Khan Younis, where advancing Israeli forces reached the centre this week, a whole city block had been bombed overnight to dust.

Although most people had fled after Israeli warnings, neighbours digging with a hand shovel believed four people were inside.

One body had been recovered.