Gaza pummeled by Israeli strikes as hostage release deal set for Friday

Qatar’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday that the planned four-day pause — the first cessation of violence in almost seven weeks — will begin at 7 a.m. local time Friday. The first group of hostages, 13 women and children, will be transferred at 4 p.m. the same day, with additional hostages released in batches for a total of 50 over the four days.

Ahead of the much-anticipated pause, Israel’s military said it carried out more than 300 strikes in Gaza in the past day.

Israeli artillery struck several locations late Wednesday and Thursday, according to witnesses reached by The Washington Post and reports by local journalists, from Beit Lahia in the north to Khan Younis and the Rafah refugee camp near the Egyptian border. Reporters posted images of bodies lined up at the entrance of Kamal Hospital, one of the few remaining medical facilities functioning in the north.

The Gaza Health Ministry said in a statement Thursday that more than 13,300 people have been killed since the start of the war and 35,180 wounded. About 6,000 people are missing. The figures, dated Tuesday, did not include figures from the al-Shifa and Indonesian hospitals, the ministry said. The tally is the ministry’s first update of casualties in the besieged enclave since Nov. 10. Communication failures and fighting have kept it from maintaining a daily count.

Hamas said in a statement Thursday that 200 trucks of aid and medical supplies and four trucks of fuel will enter the Gaza Strip daily during the pause and that Israeli aircraft will stop flying over the northern Gaza Strip for six hours of the day.

The delay in the implementation of the captive exchange deal stemmed from logistical complications, including how the list of hostages would be verified, Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed Al Ansari said. He cautioned that the agreement — the culmination of more than a month of intense, “very difficult and very detailed” negotiations — remained fragile.

“These are not set in stone, they are not completely guaranteed,” he said. But Qatar is “confident” in the deal and the “commitment to the success” expressed by both parties.

Still, Al Ansari said, the information about the number of hostages held in Gaza and their identities remained incomplete. He said Qatar hopes Hamas will use the pause to gather more information on who is being held in Gaza by Hamas fighters or other groups.

Israel on Thursday received the list of the names of the hostages who will be released first on Friday and has contacted their families, Israeli officials said.

Responding to a reporter’s question about the hostages, President Biden said in Nantucket, Mass., on Thursday that he was “not prepared to give an update until it’s done.” He said he was “keeping my fingers crossed” that a 3-year-old American girl will be among those released.

Israel’s emergency government approved the deal early Wednesday under growing pressure from hostage families and international allies. After initially agreeing to implement it Thursday, the head of Israel’s National Security Council, Tzachi Hanegbi, said Wednesday that no captives were likely to be freed before Friday morning.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said Thursday that it will suspend coordination with the World Health Organization over medical evacuations after several people accompanying patients in an evacuation convoy were detained by Israeli forces.

The Israel Defense Forces detained Mohamed Abu Salmiya, head of al-Shifa Hospital, and claimed it had evidence showing that Gaza’s largest hospital, “under his direct management, served as a Hamas command and control center.”

The role of hospitals has become a key controversy of the conflict, with Israel depicting them as centers of militant coordination. Palestinians deny the accusation and have repeatedly condemned their targeting.

Khaled Abu Samra was one of seven al-Shifa doctors who accompanied about 260 patients in the convoy leaving the hospital. He told The Post that the evacuation came at the direction of Israeli forces, which provided the hospital with more than a dozen ambulances and two vans with U.N. drivers.

“I was with kidney failure patients on the bus to provide assistance if anyone became fatigued on the way,” he said.

The group waited at a checkpoint for seven hours, undergoing searches, Abu Samra said. Some soldiers spoke to the children in Hebrew, possibly searching for Israeli hostages. They questioned individual patients and asked about their injuries and affiliation with Hamas, among other questions.

Some passengers were taken off the bus. Soldiers shone lights in their faces and spoke in Arabic and Hebrew. In Hebrew, they said, “You are under the protection of the Israeli army; you can ask for help from us.”

Abu Salmiya was detained along with two ambulance drivers soon after the search.

On Wednesday, the Israeli military released videos purporting to show underground passageways and rooms that appeared to be extensions of a tunnel the military uncovered last week beneath the grounds of al-Shifa. The videos show bathrooms and smaller rooms containing metal cots and an air conditioning unit but little concrete evidence to indicate what they were used for.

The Israeli military has been under heavy international pressure to prove its claims that Hamas constructed a large and elaborate command and control system under the hospital complex. The military has escorted journalists, including from The Post, into the combat zone to view some structures, including a shaft within the complex walls. Reporters were not allowed to enter the shaft or conduct independent inspections.

International law requires militaries to make clear distinctions between civilians and combatants and to take all possible steps to prevent civilian harm. Thousands of civilians have sought medical care and shelter at al-Shifa. The IDF took control of the hospital facility last week following a raid.

Israel’s Supreme Court on Thursday continued to turn aside legal challenges to the hostage release deal, ruling against three petitions brought by victims advocates.

Under the agreement, Israel will release three Palestinians — women or teenagers — it now holds in its prisons in exchange for the safe return of each hostage. Israel has said it could extend the pause in bombing by a day for every 10 hostages who are released after the initial group of 50. More than 200 people were taken hostage and at least 1,200 were killed during Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

The agreement comes as the United Nations and other international humanitarian organizations are increasingly sounding the alarm over the situation in Gaza.

“This is as bad as it gets,” Martin Griffiths, the U.N.’s emergency relief coordinator, told CNN on Wednesday, noting how 4 out of 5 people in Gaza have been displaced. “Gaza is a global crisis.”

Israeli attacks on medical infrastructure have been a recurring issue during the fighting, and on Wednesday, the toll from the shooting at a Doctors Without Borders convoy trying to evacuate wounded staff members from Gaza City rose to two, the organization said.

In a statement after the attack, it said that the evacuation convoy followed an itinerary provided by the Israeli army and that its vehicles were clearly marked with the group’s logo. After being blocked at a checkpoint for several hours, the convoy turned back and then came under fire near the organization’s office.

In a statement Thursday, the IDF said the convoy was driving “suspiciously in their direction,” and that its forces “fired warning shots in order to warn the vehicles from approaching. No hits were identified.”

Hezbollah and Israel continued to trade fire along the Lebanon-Israel border in clashes that have steadily escalated in recent weeks, fueling concerns of a wider war. Hezbollah strikes on Israel have reached as many as a dozen attacks a day in recent days. Five Hezbollah members, including the son of a senior Hezbollah official, were killed in an Israeli strike Wednesday night, a Hezbollah media spokesperson told The Post.

George reported from Doha, Qatar, and Balousha from Amman, Jordan. Matt Viser in Nantucket, Mass., and Amanda Coletta in Toronto contributed to this report.