Israel-Gaza updates: IDF says it expects war to last all of 2024

The Israel Defense Forces has published the findings of its investigation into the accidental killing of three hostages by IDF soldiers in the Shejaiya area of Gaza on Dec. 15.

The IDF Chief of the General Staff concluded that "the IDF failed in its mission to rescue" them and "the entire chain of command feels responsible."

The three hostages -- 28-year-old Yotam Haim, 26-year-old Alon Shamriz and 22-year-old Samer Talalka -- were carrying a stick with a white cloth, and the IDF initially said its forces "mistakenly identified" the men as a threat. Soldiers opened fire, killing two of the men.

The third hostage, who was injured, ran back into the building where all three had emerged from, and someone cried "help" in Hebrew. The battalion commander ordered his troops to stop firing, but, despite the order, another burst was fired, killing the third hostage, according to the IDF.

The investigation “revealed that the command ranks had information about the presence of hostages in the Shejaiya area and even took actions to prevent strikes on locations suspected of having hostages inside," the findings said.

But the probe also revealed that "IDF soldiers involved in the incident experienced complex combat situations in the days preceding the incident and were in a state of high alert for a threat," the findings said. "During the battles, they encountered deceptions by the enemy and attempts to draw them into pits and buildings rigged with explosives."

Days before Dec. 15, IDF soldiers heard cries for help in Hebrew.

"The forces interpreted this as a terrorist deception attempt," the investigation said.

“Some of the forces heard the cries but suspected it was an attempt by the terrorists to draw the forces inside the building to harm them, as had happened in the past," the investigation said.

-ABC News’ Jordana Miller

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.”