The Israeli army said it destroyed a key hideout for Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
The temporary cease-fire between Hamas and Israel ended on Dec. 1, and Israel has resumed its bombardment of Gaza.
The end of the cease-fire came after Hamas freed over 100 of the more than 200 people its militants took hostage during the Oct. 7 surprise attack on Israel. In exchange, Israel released more than 200 Palestinians from Israeli prisons.
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The latest outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that governs the Gaza Strip, has passed the four-month mark.
In the Gaza Strip, at least 30,228 people have been killed and 71,377 others have been wounded by Israeli forces since Oct. 7, according to Gaza's Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health.
In Israel, at least 1,200 people have been killed and 6,900 others have been injured by Hamas and other Palestinian militants since Oct. 7, according to the Israel Defense Forces.
There has also been a surge in violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Israeli forces have killed at least 395 people in the territory since Oct. 7, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
The ongoing war began after Hamas-led militants launched an unprecedented incursion into southern Israel from neighboring Gaza via land, sea and air. Scores of people were killed while more than 200 others were taken hostage, according to Israeli authorities. The Israeli military subsequently launched retaliatory airstrikes followed by a ground invasion of Gaza, a 140-square-mile territory where more than 2 million Palestinians have lived under a blockade imposed by Israel and supported by Egypt since Hamas came to power in 2007. Gaza, unlike Israel, has no air raid sirens or bomb shelters.
The Israel Defense Forces said its soldiers found a tunnel shaft and rocket launcher inside a mosque, which was next to a school near Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
The soldiers, who destroyed the tunnel shaft, also found areas to store weapons, the IDF said.
-ABC News’ Jordana Miller
Eighty-three children have been killed in the West Bank over the last 12 weeks -- which is more than double the number of children killed in all of 2022 and marks the deadliest year on record for children in the West Bank, UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa Adele Khodr said Thursday.
A total of 297 people have been killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
"As the world watches on in horror at the situation in the Gaza Strip, children in the West Bank are experiencing a nightmare of their own. Living with a near-constant feeling of fear and grief is, sadly, all too common for children affected. Many children report that fear has become a part of their daily life, with many scared even walking to school or playing outside," Khodr said in a statement. “The suffering of children in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, must not fade into the background of the current conflict -- it is part of it."
Israeli forces have destroyed an underground tunnel near the Rantisi Hospital in northern Gaza, Israel Defense Forces spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said at a briefing.
The tunnel infrastructure, several kilometers long, “connected different locations in the Strip,” Hagari said. “[Israeli] forces uncovered three tunnel shafts in the area of the hospital, with one of them coming out of a school.”
“The tunnel network included steel doors, command control rooms, emergency rooms, many weapons that were underground and other intelligence materials,” he said.
This comes as Israeli forces “are at a very high level of readiness for the expansion of the war” in northern Gaza, Hagari said.
“We are in the final stages of the attack in the Al Burj area in the northern Gaza Strip, where we killed many terrorists,” he said.
Hagari added that Israel is also “attacking all the infrastructure that Hezbollah has built near the [Lebanon-Israel] border.”
In southern Gaza, Israeli “forces are fighting in several areas,” Hagari said. “One in the area called Al Burj in the central [Gaza] camps, where we are attacking for a third day. The second is in Khan Yunis in the south of the Gaza Strip, a major terror center of Hamas. There we expanded the operation -- today we added another division to this area and we continue to operate there with new combat methods above and below the ground.”
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi met with King Abdullah II of Jordan in Egypt on Wednesday and said "the international community must push towards" a cease-fire.
“Both leaders affirmed their complete rejection of all attempts to liquidate the Palestinian issue or to displace the Palestinians from their lands or their internal displacement, stressing that the only solution that the international community must push towards implementing is an immediate cease-fire, and the entry of relief aid in the necessary quantities and at the speed that will make a real difference in alleviating the suffering of the people of the Gaza Strip,” according to a readout from the Egyptian spokesman for the Presidency Counselor Ahmed Fahmy.
“Talks also focused on regional developments, especially in the Gaza Strip and the humanitarian tragedy it faces, which resulted in thousands of deaths and injuries and the displacement of hundreds of thousands,” the readout added.
Tensions rise in the Middle East
ABC News’ Ayat Al-Tawy
