At least 30 Palestinians have been killed in multiple Israeli attacks on Gaza, hospital staff said, as high-level negotiators prepare to resume stalled ceasefire talks.
Staff at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza said on Friday that more than a dozen women and children were among those killed in strikes on the Nuseirat refugee camp, az-Zawayda, al-Maghazi camp and Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.
Medical sources told Al Jazeera that at least 19 people were killed in the attacks in central Gaza.
Reporting from Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said Friday was shaping up to be “another bloody day”, following a 24-hour period in which at least 77 Palestinians were killed in 34 Israeli air attacks, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Abu Azzoum said gunfire in Deir el-Balah suggested a “potential military advance by Israeli ground forces” in response to a Hamas attack on an Israeli tank in the area.
Israeli fighter jets destroyed buildings in the centre of the Strip, killing journalist Omar al-Diraoui in his home in az-Zawayda – the second journalist to be killed in 24 hours.
On Thursday, it was confirmed that photographer Hassan al-Qishaoui had been killed in an Israeli attack.
Following the deaths, Gaza’s Government Media Office revised its toll of journalists killed in the enclave since the beginning of the nearly 15-month war to 202.
In southern Gaza, the civil defence said its teams recovered the bodies of two Palestinians who were killed in an attack on the Khirbet al-Adas area, near Rafah, while two others were injured and taken to the nearby Nasser Hospital.
Three others, all of whom are children, were killed in an Israeli strike that hit the vicinity of al-Shamaa mosque in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood, the civil defence said.
Meanwhile, Israel pressed on with a renewed military offensive in the north of Gaza, with Abu Azzoum reporting that Israeli forces have ordered the immediate evacuation of the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahiya.
At least 25 patients were trapped inside the hospital, along with medical staff, according to people inside who spoke to Al Jazeera. Israeli soldiers have surrounded the medical facility and are firing at it, they said.
Hamas slammed Israel’s attack on the hospital in a statement, calling it a “war crime” and part of Israel’s ongoing “genocide” in Gaza.
Israelis also woke up to an attack early on Friday morning, with the army intercepting a missile reportedly fired from Yemen, which had set off air raid sirens in Jerusalem and central Israel.
Ceasefire talks to resume
As the attacks continued, ceasefire negotiations were expected to resume on Friday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he had authorised a delegation from the Mossad intelligence agency, the Shin Bet internal security agency and the military to continue negotiations in Qatar.
Sami al-Arian, director of the Centre for Islam and Global Affairs at Istanbul Zaim University, said Hamas could be willing to walk back one of its key demands – the immediate withdrawal of all Israeli forces from Gaza.
“There has been a lot of pressure from the mediators – particularly the Qataris and Egyptians – to be flexible on these terms,” he told Al Jazeera.
“They have assured the resistance, Hamas and other groups, that eventually Israel will withdraw,” he said.
But Ori Goldberg, a Tel Aviv-based political analyst, told Al Jazeera he does not see any grounds for optimism that a ceasefire will be agreed on at the talks, amid a lack of significant international pressure being applied on either side.
“To the best of my knowledge, Hamas is interested in a deal but not excessively, because its recruitment rates are rising the longer Israel continues its genocide in Gaza,” he said.
“Certainly, the Israeli public is interested in a deal. [But] the Israeli government? Not so much – the war serves its interests,” he said.
Key mediators Qatar, Egypt and the United States have been attempting to secure a lasting deal in indirect talks for months.
The toll from the first three days of 2025 takes the number of deaths in Gaza to 45,658 since Israel began its war on the enclave on October 7, 2023.
The war has caused widespread destruction and displaced some 90 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million, many of them multiple times.
Hamas-led forces killed some 1,139 people in Israel in attacks on October 7, 2023 and took about 250 captives.
About 100 captives are still in Gaza, although at least a third of them are believed to be dead.