Fighting continued yesterday at even greater than normal intensity ahead of the ceasefire, with Israeli jets hitting more than 300 targets and troops engaged in heavy fighting around Jabalia refugee camp north of Gaza City.
An army spokesman said operations would continue until troops received the order to stop.
Hamas said 30 people had been killed in an Israeli strike on a school affiliated with the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA in Jabalia. There was no immediate comment from UNRWA.
Earlier, from across the border fence in Israel, clouds of smoke could be seen billowing above northern Gaza’s war zone accompanied by the sounds of heavy gunfire and booming explosions.
In Rafah, on the strip’s southern edge, residents combed with bare hands through the ruins of a house smashed in a giant crater. A grey-bearded man wailed amid the shattered masonry while another man lay a hand on his shoulder to comfort him. Neighbour Khaled Hamad told Reuters it was the home of a primary school teacher, killed inside with his children.
Israel says Hamas fighters use residential and other civilian buildings, including hospitals, as cover. Hamas denies this.
The delay to the start of the truce meant another day of worry for Israeli relatives who say they still know nothing about the fate of hostages, and of fear for Palestinian families trapped inside the Gaza combat zone.
“We need to know they are alive, if they’re okay. It’s the minimum,” said Gilad Korngold, desperate for any information about the fate of seven of his family members, including his three-year-old granddaughter, believed to be among the hostages.
Palestinian media reported at least 15 people killed in air strikes on Khan Younis, Gaza’s main southern city.
Israel said its strikes in the past day had hit “military command centres, underground terror tunnels, weapon storage facilities, weapon manufacturing sites, and anti-tank missile launch posts”.
Israel said yesterday it had detained the head of Gaza’s biggest hospital Al Shifa for questioning over his role in what it said was the hospital’s use as a Hamas command centre.
Hamas condemned the arrest of Shifa director Muhammad Abu Salamiya and other doctors it said were trying to evacuate remaining patients and wounded from the facility.
International alarm has focused on the fate of hospitals, especially in Gaza’s northern half, where all medical facilities have ceased functioning with patients, staff and displaced people trapped inside.
“For 11 days, we lacked water, food, and medical supplies, except for two instances when the Israeli occupation army brought sandwiches and water, which fed less than half of the people in the hospital,” Ahmed El Mokhallalati, a Shifa doctor, said.
“Every day, patients die due to Israeli occupation forces occupying the hospital.”
Meanwhile, the number of premature births has risen by almost a third in Israeli-besieged Gaza over the past month as mothers suffer growing stress and trauma, British charity Oxfam said yesterday.
Dozens of premature babies made headlines this week when they were rescued from a north Gaza hospital and transferred to Egypt after the site came under bombardment.
The northern part of the densely populated enclave has borne the brunt of Israel’s six-week-old military campaign against Gaza’s ruling Hamas movement and none of its hospitals are functioning normally.
Juzoor, an Oxfam partner organisation that is supporting hundreds of pregnant women in Gaza, said the number of premature births had risen by 25-30 per cent in the last month, attributing the rise to difficulties faced by mothers who have had to flee their homes due to bombardment and have suffered stress and trauma.
Premature babies are more susceptible to illness and Juzoor said that at least one newborn had died in each of its 13 shelters for displaced people in north Gaza over the past month.
Even before the current conflict, Gaza had a high infant mortality rate, with newborn deaths representing 68pc of the total, according to the World Health Organisation.
Sally Abi Khalil, Oxfam’s Middle East Regional Director, said some displaced mothers have had to give birth in crowded classrooms, without medical support or basic hygiene.
“I don’t think there is anyone anywhere in the world that would disagree that is simply inhumane,” she said.
Türkiye plans to evacuate some wounded or sick Gazan children and young people today as part of its third round of evacuation, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said yesterday.
Türkiye has so far brought 150 people, mostly cancer patients and their companions, from Gaza to continue their treatment. It has also evacuated more than 100 Turks, Turkish Cypriots, and their relatives this week.
Speaking at Ankara’s Esenboga airport, Koca said three sick Gazan children had been brought to Türkiye yesterday. He added that the children – a two-year-old boy, as well as two girls aged nine and 10 – would receive treatment in Türkiye.
The third round of evacuations, consisting of a group of 50 people, has been delayed due to issues regarding permissions for their releases, the minister said, but added that those problems were now largely resolved and officials were working to complete the preparations.
“We expect the third evacuation to be tomorrow (Friday) and it will be an evacuation that will largely consist of children and young people,” Koca told reporters.
Ankara has sent some 800 tonnes of humanitarian aid, medical supplies, medicine, and medical personnel to Egypt for Gazans. It has said it wants to set up a field hospital on the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing.
US forces were attacked four times in Iraq and Syria yesterday with rockets and armed drones, but there were no casualties or damage to infrastructure, a US military official said.
The official said US and international forces were attacked at two sites in northeastern Syria with multiple rockets and a one-way attack drone.
In Iraq, multiple one-way drones were launched at the Ain Al-Asad airbase west of Baghdad and a drone was launched at a base housing US forces near Erbil airport in northern Iraq.
A group calling itself the Islamic Resistance in Iraq had claimed attacks on those locations earlier in the day.
The attacks come the day after the US struck the Iran-aligned Kataeb Hizbollah armed group south of Baghdad in an attack that KH said had left eight members dead.
The attack was condemned by the Iraqi government as escalatory and a violation of sovereignty.
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