At least 46 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza, as international mediators continued negotiations aimed at securing a truce and a captive-for-prisoner exchange.
Medical sources provided Tel Aviv Tribune with the death toll on Wednesday in Gaza, as Israeli forces also carried out several raids in the occupied West Bank, killing three people.
At least 45,936 people have been killed in Gaza, according to Palestinian officials, and 109,274 others have been injured since Israel began its war following the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas fighters on the south of Israel. That attack killed at least 1,139 people, according to an Tel Aviv Tribune tally based on Israeli statistics, and about 250 others were captured.
From Deir el-Balah, Tel Aviv Tribune’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said the majority of Wednesday’s Israeli attacks were concentrated in the northern Gaza Strip, particularly around Gaza City.
An Israeli strike on a park in Gaza City killed five people and an attack on a school housing displaced people in Jabalia killed four, he said. In central Gaza, at least 10 people were killed in a strike 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 this morning,” Abu Azzoum said, adding that the Israeli attacks also injured four telecommunications workers who were working on maintaining internet landlines in the city of Gaza.
“What we have seen in the last few hours is a very devastating situation, particularly in Gaza City, which has been the epicenter of military attacks, especially in densely populated areas,” he said.
Hospitals out of service
Rawya Tabora, a nurse at the Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza, told Tel Aviv Tribune that the health facility was subject to direct Israeli bombardment “targeting the walls of the hospital and its surroundings” and preventing the delivery of aid.
The Gaza Health Ministry said earlier this week that the three main hospitals in northern Gaza remained out of service due to the fighting, with hospital director Kamal Adwan, Abu Safia, remaining detained by Israeli forces.
“Unfortunately, until now, no one has been able to provide help due to the difficult situation outside the hospital and the difficulty in coordinating with the parties involved,” Tabura said .
“We were unable to provide help to the hospital,” she added. “The situation at the hospital is very dire.”
Further south, Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis announced it would cease operations at 5 p.m. (3 p.m. GMT) on Wednesday due to a lack of fuel, while Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Deir el-Balah, said he was running out of basic medicines. and supplies.
On Wednesday, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) was among international humanitarian groups calling for unhindered access to Gaza. Humanitarian groups have repeatedly accused Israel of stifling access to aid.
The IFRC said the disastrous winter weather was “exacerbating unbearable conditions” in Gaza, where many families were “clinging 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 were killed in Gaza in the first week of 2025, “suffering from attacks, deprivation and exposure increasing in the cold.
This figure includes eight infants and newborns who died from hypothermia in recent days.
More than a million children are among those displaced in Gaza, many of them living in makeshift tents with little protection from the elements, the agency said.
“Heinous crimes”
As fighting rages in Gaza, Israeli raids continue across the occupied West Bank.
On Wednesday, the Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS) said that 45 Palestinians had been arrested since Tuesday evening in the governorates of Hebron, Nablus, Tubas, Tulkarem, Ramallah and Jerusalem.
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 reportedly a 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 Tammoun in Tubas governorate on Wednesday.
The slain children were identified as nine-year-old Rida Bisharat and ten-year-old Hamza Bisharat by the Palestinian Foreign Ministry. He called the strike a “heinous crime.”
The ministry further stated that Israel’s “implementation of its aggressive policy in the West Bank” constituted “a flagrant violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions.”
Ceasefire talks continue
As the fighting continued, mediators from Qatar, Egypt and the United States continued their efforts to broker an agreement between Israel and Hamas providing for a ceasefire and an exchange of Israeli prisoners held in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons.
Speaking on Wednesday from Paris, France, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said a deal was “very close.”
However, past efforts to obtain a trace have repeatedly failed, with Hamas and Israel accusing each other of changing the terms.
Washington has also been criticized for not imposing more pressure on its “ironclad” ally Israel, to whom 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 negotiations. He expressed hope that a deal would be reached before Trump takes office on January 20.
For his part, during a press conference on Tuesday, Trump told reporters that “all hell would break loose” if a deal was not reached by the time he took office. He declined to define what that means, or whether it could mean increased U.S. involvement in the conflict.
Later on Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the bodies of two captives, Youssef and Hamza Ziyadne, had been found in Gaza.