As international mediators continued discussions aimed at securing a truce and a captives-for-prisoners exchange, at least 46 Palestinians were killed in Israeli-permitted attacks across Gaza.
Three people were killed in several raids across the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, according to medical sources who spoke to Al Jazeera about the death toll in Gaza from Israeli forces.
At least 45, 936 people have been killed in Gaza, according to Palestinian officials, with another 109, 274 wounded since Israel began its war in the wake of the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas fighters on southern Israel. That attack killed at least 1, 139 people, according to an Al Jazeera tally based on Israeli statistics, and around 250 others were taken captive.
According to Tareq Abu Azzoum, a reporter from Deir el-Balah, the majority of Israeli attacks on Wednesday occurred in the north of Gaza Strip, particularly around Gaza City.
He claimed that four people were killed in an Israeli attack on a school in Jabalia and five people were killed in an Israeli attack on a park in Gaza City. At least 10 people, including women and children, were killed in the Bureij refugee camp’s central Gaza residence when it opened fire on a family home, according to survivors.
According to Abu Azzoum, “air strikes have increased significantly since the early hours of this morning,” adding that four telecommunications workers who were assisting with the maintenance of internet landlines in Gaza City also suffered injuries as a result of Israeli attacks.
“What we saw in the past few hours is very devastating situation, especially in Gaza City, which has been the epicentre of military attacks, especially in densely populated areas”, he said.
Hospitals out of service
Rawya Taboura, a nurse at the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza, told Al Jazeera the health facility is subject to direct Israeli shelling “targeting the hospital walls and its surroundings” and preventing aid deliveries.
The director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, Abu Safia, is still being detained by Israeli forces, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which announced earlier this week that all three major hospitals in the north of the country are still in operation as a result of the fighting.
“Unfortunately, so far, no one has been able to provide aid due to the difficulty of the situation outside the hospital and the difficulty of coordinating with the relevant parties”, , Taboura said.
“We have not been able to provide aid to the hospital”, she added. “The hospital’s situation is very dire,” he said.
Further south, the Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Deir el-Balah reported that it was out of basic medicine and supplies, and Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis announced it would stop operations on Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. (15:00 GMT).
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) was one of the international aid organizations calling for unimpeded access to Gaza on Wednesday. Israel has been repeatedly accused of preventing aid from reaching its members.
The IFRC said that dire winter weather conditions were “exacerbating the unbearable conditions” in Gaza, with many families left “clinging on to survival in makeshift camps, without even the most basic necessities, such as blankets”.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), meanwhile, reported that at least 74 children had been killed in Gaza in the first week of 2025, “suffering from attacks, deprivation, and increasing exposure to the cold”.
Eight newborns and infants who recently died from hypothermia were included in the figure.
More than a million children are among Gaza’s displaced, with many living in makeshift tents with little protection from the elements, the agency said.
‘ Heinous crimes ‘
Israeli raids have continued throughout the occupied West Bank as the fighting continues in Gaza.
On Wednesday, the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) said 45 Palestinians have been arrested since Tuesday night across the governorates of Hebron, Nablus, Tubas, Tulkarem, Ramallah, and Jerusalem.
According to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa, several teachers and students were hurt in Bethlehem after breathing tear gas at the Kisan School east of Bethlehem, according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.
Some students reportedly threw stones at Israeli military vehicles in response to the tear gas.
Meanwhile, three Palestinians, including two children, were killed by an Israeli air strike on the town of Tammun on Wednesday in Tubas governorate.
The killed children were identified as nine-year-old Rida Bisharat and 10-year-old Hamza Bisharat by the Palestinian Foreign Ministry. The strike was described as a “heinous crime” by the organization.
Further, the ministry claimed that Israel’s “application of its aggressive policies in the West Bank” was a “violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions.”
Ceasefire talks continuing
As the conflict raged, American and Qatari mediators from Egypt and the United States were working to broker a ceasefire and the release of Palestinian prisoners imprisoned in Israeli jails.  ,
Speaking from Paris, France on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken maintained that an agreement was “very close”.
However, previous attempts to elude detection have repeatedly failed, with both Hamas and Israel accusing one another of violating the terms.
Washington has also been criticized for limiting its billion-dollar military aid to its “ironclad” ally, Israel.
Meanwhile, US President-elect Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy appointee, Steve Witkoff, on Tuesday said he would travel to Doha, Qatar to join the negotiations. He expressed hope that a deal would be reached before Trump takes office on January 20.
Trump, for his part, said to reporters that “all hell will break out” if negotiations don’t materialize by the time he takes office at a press conference on Tuesday. He declined to explain what that means or whether it might indicate a rise in US involvement in the conflict.
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