Israeli strikes kill 46 in Gaza as ceasefire talks continue | News about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

At least 46 Palestinians were killed Israeli attacks through Gaza, while international mediators continued talks aimed at securing a ceasefire and a prisoner-for-prisoner exchange.

Medical sources provided Al Jazeera with the death toll in Gaza on Wednesday as Israeli forces also carried out several raids across the occupied West Bank, killing three people.

At least 45,936 people have been killed in Gaza, according to Palestinian officials, with another 109,274 wounded since Israel began its war following an attack by Hamas fighters on southern Israel on October 7, 2023. That attack killed at least 1,139 people, according to Al Jazeera figures based on Israeli statistics, and about 250 others were captured.

Reporting from Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said most of the Israeli attacks on Wednesday were concentrated in the north of the Gaza Strip, particularly around Gaza City.

In the Israeli attack on the city park in Gaza, five people were killed, and in the attack on the school for the shelter of displaced persons in Jabalia, four were killed, he said. In central Gaza, at least 10 people were killed in an attack on a family home in the Bureij refugee camp, including women and children, survivors said.

“There has been an intensification of airstrikes since the early hours of the morning,” Abu Azzoum said, adding that the Israeli strikes also injured four telecommunications employees working to maintain fixed internet lines in Gaza City.

“What we have seen in the past few hours is a very devastating situation, especially in Gaza City, which has been the epicenter of military attacks, especially in densely populated areas,” he said.

Hospitals out of order

Rawya Taboura, a nurse at the Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza, told Al Jazeera that the health facility was exposed to direct Israeli shelling “targeting the walls of the hospital and its surroundings” and preventing the delivery of aid.

Gaza’s health ministry said earlier this week that all three main hospitals in northern Gaza remain closed due to fighting, and the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Abu Safia, remains in the custody of Israeli forces.

“Unfortunately, so far no one has been able to provide help due to the difficult situation outside the hospital and the difficulty of coordinating with the relevant parties,” Taboura said.

“We couldn’t help the hospital,” she added. “The situation in the hospital is very difficult.”

Further south, Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis announced it would suspend operations at 17:00 (1500 GMT) on Wednesday due to a lack of fuel, and Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Deir el-Balah reported it was short of essential medicines and supplies.

On Wednesday, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) was among international aid groups calling for unimpeded access to Gaza. Humanitarian groups have repeatedly accused Israel of stifling access to aid.

The IFRC said the terrible winter weather conditions were “exacerbating unbearable conditions” in Gaza, with many families left “to cling to survival in makeshift camps, without even the most basic necessities, such as blankets”.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that at least 74 children were killed in Gaza in the first week of 2025, “suffering from attacks, poverty and increasing exposure to cold.”

The figure included eight infants and newborns who died of hypothermia in recent days.

More than a million children are among the displaced in Gaza, with many living in makeshift tents with little protection from the elements, the agency said.

‘Heinous crimes’

As fighting rages in Gaza, Israeli attacks continue across the occupied West Bank.

On Wednesday, the Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs Commission and the Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS) said 45 Palestinians had been arrested since Tuesday night in Hebron, Nablus, Tubas, Tulkarem, Ramallah and Jerusalem provinces.

In Bethlehem, several teachers and students were injured after inhaling tear gas fired by Israeli soldiers at the Kisan school east of Bethlehem, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

The tear gas was allegedly in response to some students throwing stones at Israeli military vehicles.

Meanwhile, three Palestinians, including two children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on the town of Tammun in Tubas province on Wednesday.

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs identified the slain children as nine-year-old Rida Bisharat and 10-year-old Hamza Bisharat. He described the strike as a “heinous crime”.

The ministry went on to say that Israel’s “implementation of its aggressive policy in the West Bank” was a “flagrant violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions”.

Ceasefire negotiations continue

As the fighting continued, mediators from Qatar, Egypt and the United States sought to reach an agreement between Israel and Hamas that would have provided for a ceasefire and the exchange of Israeli prisoners held in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

Speaking from Paris, France on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said a deal was “very close”.

However, previous efforts to secure the trail have repeatedly failed, with Hamas and Israel accusing each other of changing conditions.

Washington has also been criticized for not imposing more leverage on its “armored” ally Israel, to which it provides billions of dollars in military aid.

Meanwhile, US President-elect Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, said on Tuesday he would travel to Doha, Qatar to join the talks. He expressed hope that a deal would be reached before Trump takes office on January 20.

For his part, speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, Trump he told reporters that “hell will break loose” if an agreement is not reached by the time he takes office. He declined to define what that means or whether it could mean increased US involvement in the conflict.

Later on Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the bodies of two prisoners, Youssef and Hamza Ziyadna, had been found in Gaza.