A shipment of medicine for dozens of hostages held by Hamas has arrived in Gaza after France and Qatar mediated the first agreement between Israel and the militant group since a week-long ceasefire in November.
Qatar’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Majed al-Ansari, announced late on Wednesday that the shipment had crossed into Gaza, without saying whether the medicine had been distributed.
A senior Hamas official said that for every box provided for the hostages, 1,000 boxes of medicine would be sent in for Palestinians. The deal also includes humanitarian aid for residents of the besieged coastal enclave.
The agreement came more than 100 days into a conflict that shows no sign of ending and has sparked tensions across the Middle East, with an array of strikes and counter-strikes in recent days from northern Iraq to the Red Sea and from southern Lebanon to Pakistan.
Palestinian militants are still putting up resistance across Gaza in the face of one of the deadliest military campaigns in recent history. Some 85% of the narrow coastal territory’s 2.3 million people have fled their homes, and the United Nations says a quarter of the population is starving.
Israel has vowed to dismantle Hamas to ensure it can never repeat an attack like the one on October 7 that triggered the war. Militants burst through Israel’s border defences and stormed through several communities, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and capturing around 250.
Israel also has promised to win the return of more than 100 hostages still held inside Gaza. Hamas in late November released most of the women and children held captive in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.
Hamas has said it will not release any more hostages until there is a permanent ceasefire, something Israel and the US, its top ally, have ruled out.
In the past few days:
– A US-led coalition has carried out strikes against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen;
– Iran has struck what it described as an Israeli spy headquarters in northern Iraq and anti-Iran militants in Pakistan and Syria;
– Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah escalated the intensity of their fighting across the border.
Iran’s militant allies across the region say they are striking US and Israeli targets to pressure the two countries to halt the Gaza offensive. Tehran has encouraged the attacks while avoiding direct involvement, but it appeared to be flexing its muscles with the strikes in Syria and Pakistan.
The Houthis have vowed to continue attacking international shipping in the Red Sea in what they say is a blockade of Israel, with repercussions for global trade.
Tensions are also soaring in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces have conducted near-daily arrest raids that often trigger shootouts with Palestinian militants.
Israeli forces killed at least 10 Palestinians on Wednesday in the West Bank, including five in the urban Balata refugee camp in the north, the military said. Among that group was a senior militant whom the military said was involved in recent attacks against Israelis.
Five Palestinians were also killed in an Israeli strike in Tulkarem, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. The military said it targeted a group of militants who had opened fire and were throwing explosives at Israeli soldiers.
More than 360 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since October 7.
Israel said at the start of the year that it had largely defeated Hamas in northern Gaza and would scale back operations there, focusing on dense urban areas in the centre and south of the territory. Additional Israeli forces withdrew from Gaza on Monday, but there has been little apparent let-up in strikes, with scores of Palestinians killed every day.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Wednesday that 163 bodies had been brought to the territory’s remaining functioning hospitals in the past 24 hours, as well as 350 wounded people.
The update brought the war’s overall death toll in Gaza to 24,448, with more than 60,000 wounded. The ministry said many other dead and wounded are trapped under rubble or unreachable because of the fighting.
Israel blames the high civilian death toll on Hamas because it fights in dense residential areas. Israel says its forces have killed roughly 9,000 militants, without providing evidence, and that 192 of its own soldiers have been killed since the Gaza ground offensive began.
Militants are still fighting in all parts of the territory, and Israel appears no closer to freeing the remaining hostages. The deaths of two more hostages were confirmed on Tuesday after Hamas said they were killed in Israeli air strikes.
