Israeli strikes killed at least 76 people in the Gaza Strip in the first three days of 2025. The attack came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said it had authorised a delegation from the Mossad intelligence service, the Shin Bet internal security service and the military to continue negotiations in Qatar for a ceasefire agreement.
Israeli strikes kill at least 76 in Gaza in the first days of 2025
The first of the military strikes came on New Year’s Day, when Israeli forces attacked Jabalia in northern Gaza, the Bureij refugee camp and Gaza City in central Gaza, and the southern town of Khan Younis, killing 26 people.
Other airstrikes on the Gaza Strip killed at least 50 people, including several children, with strikes targeting Hamas security personnel and an Israeli-declared humanitarian zone, reports said.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said four children and a woman were among those killed in the New Year’s Day attack. At least 10 other Palestinians were missing and believed to be under the rubble. “Fifteen people were killed and more than 20 injured in a massacre after midnight at a house housing displaced people in Jabalia town,” Al Jazeera quoted a spokesman for Gaza’s civil defence agency as saying.
A woman and a child were killed in the overnight attack in the Bureij refugee camp. In the Shuja’iyya area of Gaza City, a strike on a residential house belonging to the al-Suweirki family killed six people, including two children and a woman, the Civil Defence Agency said. Another strike in Khan Younis killed three people.
The other attacks came as the Israeli strike hit the seaside humanitarian zone of Muwasi, as hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians tried to shelter from the cold winter weather, media reports said.
Netanyahu sends envoys to Qatar for Gaza ceasefire talks
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has authorised a delegation to travel to Qatar to negotiate a ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza, his office said on Thursday, possibly a last-ditch effort to broker a deal before US President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
The delegation includes members of Israel’s spy agency Mossad, the Shin Bet internal security service and the Israel Defence Forces. The timing of their trip has not been named.
The one-line comment from Netanyahu’s office about the trip followed Hamas’ claims that its delegation had concluded a round of talks with Egyptian mediators in Cairo on Thursday.
Israel sent a delegation to Qatar last month to re-establish relations with the mediators, signalling that a deal was close. The agreement aims to return about 100 Israeli hostages held by Hamas and end an Israeli siege that has killed tens of thousands of people and plunged Gaza into a humanitarian crisis.
Trump, who takes office on January 20, has threatened that if Hamas does not release the remaining hostages before his inauguration, “there will be a price to pay for everything.”
A necessary condition for a ceasefire
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday that Hamas must release the hostages soon or it would suffer “strikes on a scale that Gaza has not seen in a long time.”
There has been only one pause in fighting since the war began – for seven days in November 2023. Repeated attempts to end the fighting – mediated by Egypt and Qatar and involving the US – have failed, with both sides blaming each other. This time, there are signs of problems similar to those that have derailed previous ceasefire attempts.
Jihad Taha, a Hamas spokesman, said in a statement Thursday that Israel’s new conditions had caused the failure, without elaborating. Earlier, Israeli public broadcaster Kan reported that Hamas had asked for a week-long pause in fighting to gather information about hostages. Hamas declined to comment on the reports.
Hamas killed about 1,200 Israelis and took about 250 hostages when it invaded Israel on October 7, 2023. More than 100 hostages were released during the November 2023 ceasefire. Of the 100 people left in Gaza, about 40 are presumed dead. Israel’s military action has killed more than 45,500 Palestinians, the Hamas-run health ministry said.
Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s former finance minister, wrote on X:
“At least 17,000 children are alone in Gaza, UNICEF says. Orphans. Or kids separated from their parents by Israel’s army onslaught. Many of them maimed. And the West whistles in a moral storm of its making…”
