Israeli fire kills at least 5 Palestinians in Gaza, a hospital in the enclave says

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli troops fired over the ceasefire line in the northern Gaza Strip on Friday, killing at least five Palestinians, including a baby, according to a local hospital that received the casualties. The killings came as the tenuous Israel-Hamas truce has stalled in recent weeks.

The five died in Tuffah, an eastern neighborhood in Gaza City, said Rami Mhanna, managing director of Shifa Hospital.

Israel’s military said troops identified “a number of suspicious individuals … in command structures west of the Yellow Line,” and fired at them. The incident is under review and the military “regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals,” it added.

The Yellow Line divides the Israeli-held part of Gaza from the rest of the territory, and was drawn under the U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement that went into effect in October.

Also Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump’s Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff was planning to host in Florida top officials from Middle Eastern countries mediating the Gaza ceasefire, according to a U.S. official.

The talks are an effort to push the ceasefire into its second, much more complex phase.

The first phase began in October, days after the two-year anniversary of the initial Hamas-led attack on Israel that killed around 1,200 people. All but one of the 251 hostages taken that day have been released, alive or dead, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and detainees.

The war in Gaza has killed more than 70,660 Palestinians, roughly half of them women and children, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between militants and civilians in its count. The ministry, which operates under the Hamas-run government, is staffed by medical professionals and maintains detailed records viewed as generally reliable by the international community.

Though the ceasefire, now in its third month, has mostly held, its progress has slowed amid accusations of violations by both sides.

The second phase of the deal is supposed to involve even bigger challenges — the deployment of an international stabilization force, a technocratic governing body for Gaza, the disarmament of Hamas and further Israeli troop withdrawals from the territory.

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