Ahead of the planned four-day break in hostilities, Israel announces that it will continue the war for another two months after a “brief respite.”
Hamas has said about 30 people were killed in an Israeli attack on a United Nations-affiliated school in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, as time runs out on a planned ceasefire between the Palestinian group and Israel.
On Thursday, Gaza’s health ministry reported 27 deaths in the attack on the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) Abu Hussein School, which housed displaced Palestinians fleeing violence and heavy bombing in other parts of the Gaza Strip .
Israeli forces also launched renewed attacks on the Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza, targeting the main entrance and power generators.
Ashraf al-Qudra, the ministry spokesman, said the hospital was “heavily bombed” and “large parts of the building” were attacked.
More than 200 patients, medical staff and internally displaced persons were currently in the hospital in Beit Lahiya, which has been under siege for a week.
Meanwhile, Israeli warplanes hit the Sheikh Nasser neighborhood in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, killing at least five people and wounding dozens, according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.
It was also reported that at least ten people were killed when Israeli forces attacked a residential building in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of northern Gaza.
According to the Palestinian ministry, 12-year-old Mohammed Ibrahim Fuad Edely was shot dead by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank.
The incident brought the number of Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank since October 7 to 229, including 52 children.
Israel’s relentless bombings have killed more than 14,800 people in Gaza since October 7, according to Palestinian officials. In Israel, the official death toll from Hamas attacks is around 1,200.
Palestinians search for survivors of the Israeli bombing in Rafah, Gaza Strip, November 22, 2023 [Hatem Ali/AP]
I’m struggling to move on
Mediator Qatar announced that a four-day ceasefire between Israel and Hamas would begin at 7 a.m. local time (05:00 GMT) on Friday.
But Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, in an interview with a Marine special forces unit on Thursday, called the upcoming pause a “short reprieve… at the end of which the fighting will continue intensely and we will apply pressure to bring back more hostages.”
“At least another two months of combat operations are expected,” he said.
Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said: “The [captive release] The outline is not the end of the process, but the beginning.”
“In the coming days, we will focus on planning and finalizing preparations for the next phases of combat.”
A spokesman for Hamas’ armed wing, Abu Obeida, said Palestinian fighters remained ready to confront Israeli forces as long as the war lasted and called for resistance to Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank.