At least 35 Palestinians have been killed Israel is attacking Gaza since dawn, as key negotiators prepare to resume stalled talks to resolve the conflict.
Israeli forces killed at least 19 people in the central Gaza Strip on Friday, medical sources told Al Jazeera.
Reports from Deir el-Balah, in central Gaza, Al Jazeera's Tareq Abu Azzoum said Friday was set to be “another bloody day”, following a 24-hour period in which at least 71 Palestinians were killed in 34 Israeli airstrikes, according to the Office of Gaza Media.
Abu Azzoum said the gunfight in Deir el-Balah showed “the advance of the Israeli army” in response to a Hamas attack on an Israeli tank in the area.
Israeli warplanes destroyed a house in the center of the Strip, killing journalist Omar al-Diraoui at his home in Az-Zawayda – the second journalist to be killed in 24 hours.
On Thursday, it was confirmed that artist Hassan al-Qishaoui was killed in an Israeli attack.
After the death, the Office of the Media in Gaza has changed its number journalists killed in the area since the beginning of the war about 15 months to 202.
Meanwhile, Israel continued to attack soldiers in northern Gaza, with Abu Azzoum reporting that Israeli soldiers ordered the evacuation of the Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahiya.
The Israelis woke up early Friday morning, when the army intercepted a missile it said had been detonated. Yemenwhich had sounded the alarm of the plane in Jerusalem and in the middle of Israel.
Ceasefire talks will resume
As the attacks continue, ceasefire talks are expected to resume on Friday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said he had allowed representatives from the Mossad intelligence agency, the Shin Bet internal security agency and the military to continue talks in Qatar.
Sami al-Arian, director of the Center for Islam and Global Affairs at Istanbul Zaim University, said that Hamas may be ready to return to one of its key demands – the immediate withdrawal of all Israeli forces from Gaza.
“There has been a lot of pressure from the mediators – especially the Qataris and the Egyptians – to be able to make changes on this basis,” he told Al Jazeera.
“They have confirmed to the resistance, Hamas and other groups, that in the end Israel will leave,” he said.
But Ori Goldberg, a political analyst in Tel Aviv, told Al Jazeera that he does not see any reason to be optimistic that an agreement will be reached at the talks, given the serious lack of international cooperation on both sides.
“As far as I know, Hamas is interested in cooperation but not too much, because the number of recruits is increasing while Israel continues to kill people in Gaza,” he said.
“Of course, the Israeli people are interested in cooperation. (But) the Israeli government? Not so much – the war serves its interests,” he said.
Mediators from Qatar, Egypt and the United States have been trying to find a lasting agreement in indirect talks for months.
The threat of the first three days of 2025 brings the number of people who have died in Gaza to about 46,000 since Israel began its war on October 7, 2023, following the terrorist attacks led by Hamas.
The war has been devastating and has displaced 90 percent of Gaza's 2.3 million people, many of them multiple times.
Hamas-led forces killed about 1,200 people in Israel in an attack on October 7, 2023 and took about 250 hostages.
About 100 prisoners are still in Gaza, although about a third of them are believed to have died.