Israel reports worst combat losses in Gaza since end of October but is undeterred by UN ceasefire vote

Israelannounced its worst combat losses in more than a month on Wednesday after an ambush in the ruins of Gazaand faced growing diplomatic isolation as civilian deaths mounted and a humanitarian catastrophe worsened in the Palestinian territory.

Israelreported that 10 of its soldiers were killed in the past 24 hours, including a full colonel commanding a forward base and a lieutenant-colonel commanding a regiment. It was the worst one-day loss since 15 soldiers were killed on Oct. 31.

Intense fighting was underway in both north and south Gaza, one day after the United Nations demanded an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. U.S. President Joe Biden saidIsrael's "indiscriminate" bombing of civilians wascosting Israel its international support.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military would fight ondespite international pressure for a ceasefire.

"We're continuing until the end, until victory, until Hamas is annihilated," he told soldiers in Gaza over radio. "I say this in the face of great pain but also in the face of international pressures. Nothing will stop us."

Most of the deaths came in the Shejaia district of Gaza City in the north, where Israeli troops were ambushed trying to rescue another group of soldiers who had attacked Hamas fighters in a building, the military said.

AnIsraeli military official saidIsraelhad paid "a very heavy price" in the incident.

Hamas said the episode showed thatIsraeli forces could never subdue Gaza."The longer you stay there, the greater the bill of your deaths and losses will be, and you will emerge from it carrying the tail of disappointment and loss, God willing."

In a televised address, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyehsaid any future arrangement in Gaza without Hamas was a "delusion."

Israelhad global sympathy when it launched a campaign to annihilate the Hamas militant group, which controls Gaza, after fighters stormed across the border fence on Oct. 7, killing 1,200Israelis, including several Canadian citizens, and seizing 240 hostages.

Since then,Israelhas besieged the enclave and laid much of it to waste. Gaza'sHamas-runhealth ministrysaid on Wednesday at least 18,608 people have been killed and 50,594 injured inIsraeli strikes since Oct. 7. Many thousands more are feared lost in the rubble or beyond the reach of ambulances.

Waning international support

The UN General Assembly vote demanding a ceasefire has no legal force but was the strongest sign yet of eroding international support for Israel's actions. Three-quarters of the 193 member states voted in favour, including Canada.

Only eight countries joined the United States and Israel in voting against.

A joint statement issued by Canada, Australia and New Zealand said,"The price of defeating Hamas cannot be the continuous suffering of all Palestinian civilians."

WATCH l Polls show support for Netanyahu is declining:

Protesters call for Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu's ouster

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Duration 2:57

Protesters in Israel blame Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the death of their loved ones at the hands of Hamas militants on Oct. 7. Some opinion polls say more than two-thirds of the country is in favour of him leaving office now or immediately after the war.

Before the vote, Biden saidIsraelstill has support from "most of the world" for its fight against Hamas.

"But they're starting to lose that support by indiscriminate bombing that takes place," he told a campaign donor event.

In the most public sign of division between the U.S. andIsraeli leaders so far, Biden said Netanyahu needed to change his hardline government, and that ultimatelyIsrael"can't say no" to an independent Palestinian state, opposed by far-right members of theIsraeli cabinet.

Tent shelters as winter takes hold

Warplanes again bombed the length of Gaza and aid officials said the arrival of winter rain worsened conditions for hundreds of thousands sleeping rough in makeshift tents. The vast majority of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been made homeless.

In the south Gaza city ofRafah, where hundreds of thousands of people have sought shelter, the bodies of a family killed in an overnight airstrike,including several small children, were being laid out in the rain in bloodied white shrouds. One, the size of a newborn, was wrapped in a pink blanket.

Ahmed Abu Reyash collected the bodies of his nieces, aged 5 and 7. As he walked through the street carrying one of the girls, a relative tugged at the shroud and shouted: "These are children! Children! Do they kill anyone other than children? No! These are innocents! They killed them with their dirty hands!"

At a tent camp in Rafah, Yasmin Mhani said she had woken up at night to find her youngest child, who is seven months old,soaking wet. Her family of five is sharing a single blanket after their home was destroyed by anIsraeli airstrike. One child was killed and they lost all their possessions.

"This is the fifth place we have had to move to, fleeing from one place to another, with nothing but a T-shirt on," she said, hanging wet clothes outside her tent.

The scars ofIsrael's ground assault could also be seen in a cemetery in the Al-Faluja neighbourhood of Jabalia in northern Gaza. Tanks had churned up the ground, breaking and scattering gravestones and disinterring some corpses.

Since a week-long truce collapsed at the start of December,Israeli forces have extended the ground campaign into the south with the storming of the main southern city of Khan Younis.

Meanwhile, fighting has intensified amid the rubble of the northwhereIsraelhad previously said its military objectives had been largely met.

In the south,Israeli forces storming Khan Younis advanced in recent days to the city centre, and on Wednesday were using bulldozers to destroy a road near the home ofYahya Al-Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, resident Abu Abdallah told Reuters.

Hospitals in the north have largely stopped functioning. In the south, they have been overrun by dead and wounded, carried in by the dozen throughout the day and night.

"Doctors including myself are stepping over the bodies of children to treat children who will die," Dr. Chris Hook, a British physician deployed with medical charity MSF at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, told Reuters.

Israelsays it has been encouraging increased aid to Gaza through Egypt's border, and is announcing daily four-hour pauses in operations near Rafah to help civilians reach it.

The UN says cumbersome inspections and insecurity limit aid flows.