Israel-Hamas war live: no ceasefire or hostage release before Friday, Israeli and US officials say | Israel-Hamas war

The bodies of dozens of unidentified people were buried on Wednesday in a mass grave at a cemetery in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, AFP reports. The agency writes:

Wrapped in blue tarpaulin, the bodies were lowered on stretchers, some of them stained with blood, into a sandy pit that was gradually enlarged by a digger. Some were the size of children.

“As these martyrs had no one to say goodbye to, we dug a mass grave to bury them. They are unknown martyrs,” Bassem Dababesh of the emergency committee at the religious affairs ministry told AFP.

The remains, which bore only numbers, had come from the Indonesian and al-Shifa hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip, according to members of the committee at the burial site.

The Indonesian hospital on the edge of the Jabalia refugee camp, which had been hit by Israeli air strikes, was partly evacuated on Monday, said Ashraf al-Qudra, spokesman for the Hamas-controlled health ministry.

“There were bodies everywhere. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I wouldn’t have believed it,” said Umm Mohammed al-Ran, a woman evacuated from the Indonesian hospital towards Rafah in the south.

“Wounded people died in front of us as they bled out,” she told AFP.

“The stench of death was everywhere in the hospital. The wounded were crying out for painkillers, but the doctors didn’t have any to give them.”

She held up her phone to show a video she had taken. It showed worms crawling from the infected wound on a patient’s leg.

The bodies that arrived at Khan Yunis on Wednesday would have been “detained” by Israel before being released after representations from “third countries and the United Nations”, according to the emergency committee at the religious affairs ministry.

Khalil Siam, director of a transport company, told AFP that the bodies had arrived the night before, and it was not known “if they’re decomposing or not”.

AFP contacted the Israeli military and several UN agencies operating in Gaza, but no reply had been received late Wednesday.

There are thousands of dead in the Gaza Strip, and the question of burials has shocked many Gazans.

Since the war began, war dead have been buried hastily in private plots of land and even a football field, when cemeteries are full or inaccessible because of the fighting.

Adeshola Ore

In Australia, hundreds of students have gathered in front of Melbourne’s Flinders Street station, with schoolchildren walking out of class to attend the strike. Some students were draped in the Palestinian flag while others held “Free Palestine” posters.

The students participating in the schools strike spilt out onto the road to block the city’s busy Flinders and Swanston street intersection.

Year 11 student Audra, co-organiser of the rally, told the crowd they must continue to stand with Palestine:

To strike for Palestine, to defy our principals and politicians who tell us we don’t know what we’re talking about.

I walked out of school today with all of you to take a stand on the right side of history.

The rally has attracted backlash, with an open letter from members of the state of Victoria’s Jewish community urging state premier Jacinta Allan and education minister Ben Carroll to take a tougher stance against the strike.

Allan said she expected students to stay in school while her federal counterpart Jason Clare said pupils should be in the classroom during school hours.

A pro-Palestine schools strike in Sydney is also planned for Friday.

Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesperson Majid bin Mohammed Al Ansari says an announcement on the beginning of the truce could come in the next few hours, according to Reuters.

Qatar has been mediating in the negotiations on the truce.

Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement has officially confirmed that five of its fighters, including the son of a senior lawmaker, have been killed, amid skirmishes at the Israel-Lebanon border, according to AFP.

Abbas Raad, son of the head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc Mohammed Raad, was “martyred on the road to Jerusalem”, the group said in a statement – the phrase it has been using to announce the death of its members due to Israeli fire since the war started on 7 October.

It issued separate statements with the identities and photographs of four other fighters who were also killed.

A source close to the family said that Abbas Raad “was killed with a number of other Hezbollah members” in an Israeli strike Wednesday on a house in south Lebanon’s Beit Yahun.

Since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7, the frontier between Lebanon and Israel has seen escalating exchanges of fire, mainly between Israel and Shiite Muslim movement Hezbollah, but also Palestinian groups, raising fears of a broader conflagration.

Israel’s army said in statements Wednesday evening that it had struck a number of Hezbollah targets and sources of fire from Lebanon, including a Hezbollah “terrorist cell” and infrastructure.

Since the cross-border exchanges began, 107 people have been killed on the Lebanese side, according to an AFP tally. At least 75 are Hezbollah fighters but the toll also included at least 14 civilians, three of them journalists.

Seven Hezbollah fighters have also been killed in Syria.

On the Israeli side, six soldiers and three civilians have been killed, according to authorities.

The strike came just hours after the four-day truce in Gaza was announced between Israel and Hamas, which is a Hezbollah ally.

Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, who visited Beirut on Wednesday, warned in an interview that if the Hamas-Israel ceasefire begins but “does not continue… the conditions in the region will not remain the same as before the ceasefire and the scope of the war will expand”.

Israeli attacks have continued on Gaza overnight. Palestinian media said early Thursday that Israeli aircraft and artillery struck the southern city of Khan Younis in at least two waves and 15 people were killed.

Attacks were also reported in several other parts of Gaza, including the Jabaliya refugee camp, north of Gaza City, and the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza.

There was no immediate comment from Israel and Reuters was unable to independently verify the reports.

Israel has told Palestinians to move south for safety but has continued to strike areas such as Khan Younis.

On Wednesday, about 160 Palestinians – including 50 from one family – were reported killed.

Wafa, a Palestinian news agency, said 81 people had been killed since midnight Wednesday as houses were targeted in the centre of the strip. A further 60 were believed to be dead after bombing in and around Jabaliya.

Riyad al-Maliki, the Palestinian foreign minister, said during a visit to London that 52 of the victims at Jabaliya were from the same Qadoura family. “I have the list of the names, 52 of them. They were wiped out completely, from grandfather to grandchildren,” he said.

A long-awaited hostage and ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas won’t take effect before Friday, US and Israeli officials have said, dashing the hopes of families who thought captives may be freed earlier and prolonging the suffering of Palestinians under bombardment in Gaza.

“The contacts on the release of our hostages are advancing and continuing constantly,” Israeli national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said in a statement. “The start of the release will take place according to the original agreement between the sides, and not before Friday.”

Multiple news outlets later cited anonymous Israeli officials as saying that the halt in fighting would not begin on Thursday either, as had been widely expected.

White House spokesperson Adrienne Watson later said final logistical details for the release were being worked out. “That is on track and we are hopeful that implementation will begin on Friday morning,” Watson said.

It was not immediately clear what caused the delay. The deal had been expected to come into force from Thursday. An Egyptian security source told Reuters that mediators had sought a start time of 10am.

Here’s our full report on the deal:

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the Israel-Hamas war with me, Helen Livingstone.

Israeli and US officials have said that the ceasefire and hostage deal will not come into effect until Friday at the earliest.

In a statement released on Wednesday night, Benjamin Netanyahu’s national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said talks on the deal were continuing and that the hostage release “will begin according to the original agreement between the parties, and not before Friday.”

Multiple news outlets later cited anonymous Israeli officials as saying that the halt in fighting would not begin on Thursday either, as had been widely expected.

Israel’s public broadcaster Kan, citing an unidentified Israeli official, reported there was a 24-hour delay because the agreement had not been signed by Hamas and mediator Qatar. The official said they were optimistic the agreement would be carried out once it was signed.

White House spokesperson Adrienne Watson said final logistical details for the hostage release were being worked out. “That is on track and we are hopeful that implementation will begin on Friday morning,” Watson said.

Other key developments:

• Under the agreement, Hamas will free at least 50 of the more than 240 mostly Israeli hostages they took on 7 October. In turn, Israel will release at least 150 Palestinian prisoners and allow up to 300 trucks of humanitarian aid into Gaza after more than six weeks of bombardment, heavy fighting and a crippling blockade of fuel, food, medicine and other essentials.

• The deal, struck after lengthy and complex talks mediated by Qatar, the US and Egypt, came more than six weeks after the conflict began on 7 October, when Hamas launched attacks from Gaza into southern Israel, killing at least 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking more than 240 people hostage. The Israeli offensive has killed between 13,000 and 14,000 people, thousands of them children, according to Palestinian officials.

• Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has warned that “the war continues” despite the deal for a temporary ceasefire and release of some hostages. At a briefing on Wednesday, he also said part of the deal with Hamas stipulates that representatives from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) will be allowed to visit the hostages that remain in Gaza after some of them are returned. The ICRC earlier on Wednesday said it had “not been made aware of any agreement…related to visits by the ICRC to the hostages”.

• A coalition of aid agencies have warned that the four-day ceasefire left almost no time to provide effective humanitarian relief to Gaza’s 2.3 million people. In a briefing on Wednesday, they argued the only effective response would be a permanent or durable end to the war and that it remained unclear if there would be sufficient access, particularly to the north of the strip, to allow anything beyond cursory relief.

• Palestinian and Israeli officials have published the names of 300 Palestinian women and children held in Israeli prisons, at least some of whom are expected to be released in an exchange with Hamas in Gaza for dozens of Israeli hostages seized by the militant group on 7 October.

• The families of hostages held in Gaza have said they are living in a “nightmare” as they endure an agonising wait to see if their loves ones are among those freed. The relatives of some of the 240 hostages in Gaza have said they were in the dark about who would be released and when. Meanwhile, excitement is also growing for Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank that their imprisoned loved ones may also be coming home.

• More than 100 Palestinians in Gaza – including 50 from one family – were reported killed on Wednesday as Israeli forces continued attacking across the strip from land, sea and air. Wafa, a Palestinian news agency, said 81 people had been killed since midnight as houses were targeted in the centre of the strip. A further 60 were believed to be dead after bombing in and around the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north.

• The head of the UN children’s agency (Unicef) has called the Gaza Strip “the most dangerous place in the world to be a child” and said that the temporary ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas is “far from enough”. Catherine Russell, addressing the UN security council on Wednesday, also said that “all children inside the territory” were facing “what could soon become a catastrophic nutrition crisis”.

• The number of journalists killed in the Israel-Hamas conflict since 7 October has increased to at least 53, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The funerals were held in Beirut on Wednesday for Al Mayadeen’s reporter Farah Omar and camera operator Rabih al Mamari who were both killed by an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon on Tuesday.

• Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement officially confirmed that five of its fighters, including the son of a senior lawmaker, have been killed, amid skirmishes at the Israel-Lebanon border, according to AFP. Abbas Raad, son of the head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc Mohammed Raad, was “martyred on the road to Jerusalem”, the group said in a statement – the phrase it has been using to announce the death of its members due to Israeli fire since the war started on 7 October.

• Israel’s military has said it intercepted a cruise missile near the southern port city of Eilat. Eilat is in the south of Israel at the northern tip of the Red Sea, and has previously been targeted during the conflict both by long range fire from the Gaza Strip and by Yemen’s Houthi forces.

• The western powers on the UN security council face a choice of either demanding Israel lift its stranglehold on humanitarian aid into Gaza or being complicit in Israeli war crimes and collective punishment, foreign ministers from Arab and Muslim countries said on a visit to London on Wednesday.

• Pope Francis has faced criticism for allegedly drawing equivalence between Israel and Hamas. During a general audience after meeting with Israeli and Palestinian delegations at the Vatican, the pope reportedly remarked: “They suffer so much, I heard how they both suffer.” He went on: “Wars do this, but here we have gone beyond war: this is not war, it is terrorism.”