Israeli strikes killed dozens of people across Gaza on Wednesday, Palestinian medics said, as talks to halt the fighting continued in Qatar and Israeli troops recovered the body of at least one hostage from a tunnel near the southern city of Rafah.
Palestinian medical workers said an Israeli airstrike killed at least 10 people in a multi-storey house in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City, while another killed 10 in other parts of the city.
In Deir Al-Balah city in central Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are sheltering, and in Jabalia, the largest of Gaza's eight historic refugee camps, a total of seven people were killed, they said.
Israel's military said it struck Hamas militants operating in a school building in Jabalia, and that it took steps to minimise risk to civilians.
Such mass casualties have become a daily occurrence in Gaza, where some 46,000 Palestinians have now been killed in Israel's 15-month-long assault against Hamas, according to health officials in the enclave.
As Israel continued its bombardments, the United States, Qatar and Egypt were making intensive efforts to reach a ceasefire deal, with one source close to the talks saying this was the most serious attempt to reach a deal so far.
The outgoing U.S. administration has called for a final push for a deal before President Joe Biden leaves office, and many in the region view President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration on Jan. 20 as an unofficial deadline.
"Things are better than ever before, but there is no deal yet," the source told Reuters.
Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff said overnight he hoped to have good things to report about Israeli hostages held by the time Trump is sworn in as president. A deal would also involve the release of Palestinians held in Israeli jails.
As the talks continued on Wednesday, the Israeli military said troops had recovered the body of Israeli Bedouin hostage Youssef Al-Ziyadna, along with evidence that was still being examined suggesting his son Hamza, taken on the same day, may also be dead.
"We will continue to make every effort to return all of our hostages, the living and the deceased," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.
HOSPITALS UNDER THREAT
The Gaza Health Ministry said Nasser Hospital and the Gaza European Hospital might stop operations in a few hours unless the Israelis stopped restricting the flow of fuel to the facilities.
It later said it received a limited amount of fuel that would delay a complete halt of operations until Thursday unless more fuel arrives.
Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said those two hospitals and also Al Aqsa Hospital were at risk of collapse for want of fuel, threatening the lives of hundreds of patients including newborns.
Israel denies hindering humanitarian relief to Gaza and says it has facilitated the distribution of hundreds of truckloads of food, water, medical supplies and shelter equipment to warehouses and shelters over the past week.
Israel launched its assault on Gaza after Hamas fighters stormed southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and capturing more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Its Gaza campaign has laid waste to much of the enclave. Most of the territory's 2.1 million people have been displaced multiple times and face acute shortages of food and medicine, humanitarian agencies say.
On Wednesday, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said heavy rains and flooding had left families living in damaged tents with up to 30 cm of water in them, "clinging on to survival without even the most basic necessities, such as blankets".
Israel and Hamas accuse each other of blocking a ceasefire and hostage exchange deal by adhering to conditions that have torpedoed all previous peace efforts for more than a year.
On Tuesday, Hamas stood by its demand that it would only free its remaining hostages if Israel agreed to end the war and withdraw all its troops from Gaza. Israel says it will not end the war until Hamas is dismantled and all hostages are free.
© Thomson Reuters 2025.
31 Comments
Aly Rustom
There will never be a ceasefire under the Biden administration.
Zaphod
Aly Rustom
And neither under the Trump administration. Until Hamas releases the hostages, no deal. That should be common sense.
Aly Rustom
you don't know that.
Until the Israelis release all their Palestinian hostages, no deal.
Exactly.
Chabbawanga
Israel has a very clear plan. Do the devils work now, and hope that future generations will just forget the whole incident as one of those things that happened a long time ago. It is disgusting.
kurisupisu
.
Killed by Israeli bombs no doubt…
GuruMick
Chabbawanga....on the money there.
People probably already tired of this war, no matter the side they support.
Compassion fatigue for Palestinian rights and deaths.
Back to the "Oh poor Israel " narrative that has served them since 1948
Fos
There is a wrong assumption that the siege on Gaza and Lebanon by Israel’s IDF would end once the hostages are released by Hamas. Criminal Netanyahu is aiming to consolidate his gains and to expand the mass killings of Palestinians, regardless.
Israel has a right to self-defense, but this right cannot be indiscriminate vengeance. And it cannot be collective responsibility of the Palestinian people for the actions of a terrorist minority from Hamas.
This terrible conflict would end the first 24 hours the US administration stops shipping lethal weapons to Israel. Almost $30 billions (officially) since January 2024.
But, as we know, there is too much at stake for the US lobbies in Wall Street
NB
The Palestinians are experts in presenting themselves as victims. However, by their refusal to any coexistence with the Jews, by their rejection of any peace initiative aimed at equitable peace, and by their adoption of terrorist methods of top notch barbarism, they are the creators of their own disaster.
WoodyLee
By now Israel Knows damn well where the Hostages are at but will NOT rescue them for the obvious reasons.
Fugitive Bibi and his war criminals team are out to destroy Gaza as much as possible so it can be occupied and ruled afterwards, winning the hostages release or even Rescuing them will mean the end of this plan and the removal of the excuse to carry on.
Hamas knows that and so are the rest of the players in this Genocide, even if Hamas unconditionally release the hostages Bibi and the war criminals will carry on with the plan.
Zaphod
Aly Rustom
Israel does not hold hostages. That is an islamist talking point. (And I am no admirer of Netanyahu, by the way.)
Hamas terrorists murderer over 1000 and took over 100 people hostage on Oct 7. At random. The dead are dead, but until Hamas releases the hostages, no "ceasefire".
Zaphod
WoodyLee
Says who?
GuruMick
What do you call people held without trial, due process, access to lawyers or Courts, seized of the street or from their homes at night by the ARMY ?
I.d call them hostages.
GuruMick
"Ten Myths about Israel " by Ilan Pappe, an Israeli Jewish historian, has a chapter on the Oslo peace accords which dispells the false notion of Israel EVER being willing to have an equitable deal with Palestinians.
And why should they ?
Not only are they supported by the worlds military super power but God himself promised the land to them.
u_s__reamer
Israel has a very clear plan. Do the devils work now, and hope that future generations will just forget the whole incident as one of those things that happened a long time ago. It is disgusting.
So true, and it should be added that this plan is as old as civilization itself, clear proof that Man's moral evolution has proceeded at the pace of a slug. And anyone who has studied the history of the 20th century knows this ultra-violent zionist playbook for the physical destruction of Gaza and its people is unmistakably just a shameless rewrite of a monstrous crime that dare not speak its name. Unfortunately for the Israelis & "friends", there exists the law of unintended consequences that history shows we humans always run afoul of, meaning that the war crimes and sheer scale of human suffering will infect Israel with its poison and spread even further than from the river to the sea.
Zaphod
GuruMic
If that had happened, we would have heard everything about it from the legacy media, which are solidly anti-Israel.
There is no equivalence between jailed terrorists and he people snatched, abused, and held as hostages by Hamas.
Wasabi
They are prisoners not hostages, learn the difference.
Aly Rustom
REally???
In April 2022, there were 4,450 Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli prisons – including 160 children, 32 women, and over 1,000 "administrative detainees" (indefinitely incarcerated without charge)
Palestinians in Israeli custody - Wikipedia
You sure sound like one.
NOT at random. The conflict didn't start on Oct 7 AND Israel has over 4000 hostages
>
Aly Rustom
They are hostages
administrative detainees" (indefinitely incarcerated without charge)
That makes them hostages. YOU learn the difference
GuruMick
The "legacy media " is often owned by Jewish /Israeli interests, and if not owned, then an improper leverage is sought and applied to give a pro Israel bias.
Many editors recall being chastised and having threats of advertising withdrawn by various Jewish/Israeli lobby groups...who themselves deny as being " lobby groups "
There is no equal Palestinian lobby group.
And it,s a fact that Israeli detention centres hold over 10,000 Palestinians without charge or even a chance to front an Israeli Military Court.
These hostages/prisoners cannot be termed "terrorists " because NO LEGAL FINDING HAS BEEN MADE AGAINST THEM
OK ?
Israel is a settler colonial project that seeks the elimination of the native inhabitants, the subjugation of the remaining as "lesser " and thus not deserving of any rights.
None of these observations are new.
Palestine was not "empty land ", the native Palestinians were driven from their homelands in successive waves of terror by Zionist militia groups from 1948 onwards and the remaining people becoming refugees in their own country.
Who would not see the unfairness of this.
Aly Rustom
GuruMick- Well said!
Chabbawanga
Its much easier when you are the victims
Raw Beer
Riiiiight, I'm sure they care about Palestinian civilians.
They don't even care about their own civilians, as we all saw on Oct 7. Why would anyone believe they actually care about Palestinian civilian deaths. They're clearly doing the exact opposite.
Fos
Raw Beer
Tell the big US industrial military complex, the same one President Dwight Eisenhower warned against in 1961.
When you are making those crazy profits on the financial markets causing havoc in the Middle East with continuous wars, as well as with the NATO expansion in Ukraine, why would you want to deal with cease fire?
The new statistics from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute say that the 41 companies in the Top 100 are based in the United States, and recorded arms revenues of $317 billion, half the total arms revenues of the Top 100 and 2.5 per cent more than in 2022. Since 2018, the top five companies in the Top 100 have all been based in the USA.
With the outbreak of war in Gaza, the arms revenues of the three companies based in Israel in the Top 100 reached $13.6 billion. This was the highest figure ever recorded by Israeli companies in the SIPRI Top 100.
https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2024/worlds-top-arms-producers-see-revenues-rise-back-wars-and-regional-tensions#:~:text=South%20Korean%20and%20Japanese%20companies,'
NB
Every day we are shown here horrifying pictures of suffering Palestinians, but we are not shown the pictures of the Israeli hostages who are being tortured and murdered in the tunnels.
Hamas and the extremist Palestinians are the source of all violence and suffering in the region, of Arabs and Jews alike.
NB
There are two nations between the river and the sea, namely the Arabic Palestinian nation and the Israeli Jewish nation. Both nations deserve to live and to exist. The state of Israel and the state of Palestine should exist side by side.
NB
What is the difference between a prisoner and a hostage? A hostage is kidnapped without any specific, personal circumstances (apart of belonging to a specific ethnic group), while a prisoner is detained based on specific personal blames. In addition, there is a vast difference in the jailing conditioned: A hostage is being starved, tortured and murdered, and kept in a tunnel without being visited and without any accountability. The hostages are of all ages and both genders.
Raw Beer
Yes, exactly. And I'd call the entire population of Gaza as hostages; they can't leave.
NB
The fate of Pappe and his ilk will be the same as the fate of all Israelis, if Hamas wins - they will be murdered by Hamas. They will not be rewarded for the services they render to Hamas against their own nation.
Israel was willing to return the territories captured in 1967 to the Palestinians in return for peace. Read about the summit that took place in Camp David in the year 2000, e.g. in the Wikipedia article carrying the title "2000 Camp David Summit". Various numbers are cited, but now we know that Israel was willing to withraw from 96% of the West Bank, as well as from 4% of the sovereign territory of Israel Itself. The Palestinians rejected this proposition, and turned to extensive terror, thus exposing the fact that their objective is one - annihilating Israel and slaughtering its entire Jewish population. Watch a recent YouTube video, with the title "Bill Clinton says Hamas forces Israel to kill civilians", in which the president who tried to lead the Camp David summit speaks.
asusa tabi
@Chabbawanga: let me fix your tipos, it should say: "hamas and islam have a very clear plan. Do the devils work now (kill 1200 innocent jews and torture hostages with babies included), and hope that future generations will just forget the whole incident as one of those things that happened a long time ago. It is disgusting."
NB
The catastrophe in the Middle East is due to the Palestinian rejection of the 1947 UNGA resolution which called for establishing two states – the Arabic state of Palestine, and a Jewish state, Israel, which would serve as a refuge for Jews and for Judaism but at the same time would serve as a common home for Jews and for Arabs.
Ever since the aforementioned pivotal crossroad, the Palestinians have been led by extremist leaderships, which refuse stubbornly to any coexistence, and strive and act to commit genocide to Israel using methods of top-notch savagery.
NB
It is heartbreaking to witness the suffering of the Palestinians and the Israelis. Innocent children and women. People who are swallowed by a redundant vortex of hate, rage, destruction and death. All this is due to the genocidal aspirations of the extreme leadership of one nation, which refuses to coexist and to share the land with the other nation.