Palestinians in northern Gaza said intense bombardments have forced many people to flee the Shijaiyah neighborhood of Gaza City, as the Israeli military confirmed it had launched a new offensive into areas that were heavily bombed and largely emptied early in the war.

Residents described fierce battles in Shijaiyah for a second day in row, driving people to seek safety in western parts of Gaza City.

American forces destroyed seven drones and a control station vehicle in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen over the past 24 hours, the U.S. military said.

The strikes were carried out because the drones and the vehicle "presented an imminent threat to U.S. coalition forces, and merchant vessels in the region," the U.S. Central Command said in a statement on social media platform X.

A ship traveling through the Red Sea came under repeated missile fire Friday in a likely attack launched by Yemen's Houthi rebels, authorities said, the latest targeting the crucial maritime route.

Five missiles landed near the vessel as it traveled off the coast of the rebel-held port city of Hodeida in Yemen, the British military's United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said.

The amphibious assault ship USS Wasp entered the eastern Mediterranean Sea this week as the U.S. positions warships to try to keep fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon from escalating into a wider war in the Middle East.

While the Wasp has the capability to assist in the evacuation of civilians if full-scale war breaks out between Israel and the Iranian-backed group along the Lebanon border, that’s not the primary reason it was rotated in, a U.S. official said. “It’s about deterrence,” the official said.

Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jewish men blocked a major highway in central Israel for two hours on Thursday to protest a recent Supreme Court decision ordering young religious men to enlist for military service.

Military service is compulsory for most Jewish men and women in Israel. But politically powerful ultra-Orthodox parties have won draft exemptions for their followers that allow them instead to study in religious seminaries.

Israel's military on Friday said it was conducting raids backed by air strikes in northern Gaza, killing "dozens" of militants in an area where it had declared the command structure of Hamas dismantled months ago.

The operation in Shujaiya, on the edge of Gaza City, caused numerous casualties, witnesses and medics said on Thursday when it began.

Israeli authorities say 68 people — 19 sick or wounded children plus their companions — have been allowed out of the Gaza Strip and into Egypt in the first medical evacuation since early May, when the territory's sole travel crossing was shut down after Israel captured it.

The nearly nine-month Israel-Hamas war has devastated Gaza's health sector and forced most of its hospitals to shut down. Health officials say thousands of people need medical treatment abroad, including hundreds of urgent cases.

Israel launched air strikes on Gaza Thursday and the war ground on, despite comments Sunday by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the "intense phase" of the conflict was nearing an end.

The Israeli military says a soldier was killed and 16 others were wounded during a military operation in the West Bank overnight. It said Thursday that an explosive device detonated in the area of the northern city of Jenin, which has seen frequent raids and gunbattles with militants in recent years.

There were no immediate reports of Palestinian casualties. Israel says it has arrested over 4,000 Palestinians in the West Bank since Hamas' Oct. 7 attack ignited the war in Gaza, including around 1,750 suspected of being Hamas members.

Children in sandals trudge through water contaminated with sewage and scale growing mounds of garbage in Gaza's crowded tent camps for displaced families. People relieve themselves in burlap-covered pits, with nowhere nearby to wash their hands.

In the stifling summer heat, Palestinians say the odor and filth surrounding them is just another inescapable reality of war — like pangs of hunger or sounds of bombing.