People stand next to the rubble of a school, housing displaced Palestinians, which was destroyed in an Israeli strike in Gaza City on January 13, 2025.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip killed at least 18 people overnight, including six women and four children, health officials said Tuesday, as Israel and Hamas appeared to be narrowing in on a ceasefire deal to end the 15-month war and release dozens of hostages.

Officials have expressed mounting optimism that they can conclude an agreement in the coming days after more than a year of talks that have repeatedly stalled.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels meanwhile fired a missile at central Israel, setting off sirens and sending people fleeing to shelters without causing any casualties. Police said several homes were damaged outside Jerusalem and released a photo of a missile casing that had crashed into a roof.

Two strikes in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah killed two women and their four children, who ranged in age from 1 month to 9 years old. One of the women was pregnant and the baby did not survive, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, which received the bodies.

Another 12 people were killed in two strikes on the southern city of Khan Younis, according to the European Hospital.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. Israel says it only targets militants and accuses them of hiding among civilians in shelters and tent camps for the displaced.

Israel and Hamas have come under renewed pressure to halt the conflict in the lead-up to the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, whose Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, recently joined U.S., Egyptian and Qatari mediators in the Gulf country’s capital, Doha.

The phased deal would be based on a framework laid out by President Joe Biden in May and endorsed by the U.N. Security Council.

In the first phase, Hamas would release dozens of the most vulnerable hostages seized in the October 7, 2023 attack that triggered the war in exchange for dozens of Palestinian prisoners as Israeli forces pull back from population centers. At least some Palestinians would be allowed to return to their homes and there would be a surge of humanitarian aid.

In the second phase, Hamas says it would release the remaining hostages in exchange for a large number of prisoners, a full Israeli withdrawal and a lasting ceasefire. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to keep fighting until Hamas’ military and governing capabilities have been destroyed and it no longer poses a threat. The gap between the two sides would be negotiated during the first phase.

Hamas-led militants killed around 1,200 people in the Oct. 7 attack and abducted another 250. Some 100 hostages are still being held inside Gaza. The Israeli military believes that at least a third and up to half of them are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 46,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many of the dead were combatants. The Israeli military says it has killed over 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence.

The offensive has reduced large areas of the territory to rubble and displaced around 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million, with hundreds of thousands packed into tent camps along the coast where hunger is widespread.

The war has rippled across the region, igniting over a year of fighting between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants that ended with a tense ceasefire in November. Israel has also traded direct fire with Iran, which backs Hamas, Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis.

The Israeli military said it made several attempts to intercept the missile launched from Yemen early Tuesday and that “the missile was likely intercepted.” It said an earlier missile fired from Yemen was also intercepted.

The Houthis, who captured Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, and much of the country’s north in 2014, have launched a series of missile and drone attacks on Israel and have attacked international shipping in the Red Sea. The Houthis say they are fighting in solidarity with the Palestinians, but the vast majority of the targeted ships have no connection to the conflict.

Israeli tanks take position near the Israel-Gaza border, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The UN humanitarian coordinator for Gaza said Tuesday that 1.9 million people 80% of the territory’s population were now displaced, adding she was “deeply concerned” by reports of new evacuation orders for Khan Yunis.

The United Nations has estimated that up to 250,000 people are impacted by the Israeli military order for civilians to leave parts of Khan Yunis and Rafah in Gaza, which has a total population of 2.4 million.

“Palestinian civilians in Gaza have been plunged into an abyss of suffering — their home lives shattered, their lives upended,” the UN coordinator for Gaza, Sigrid Kaag, told the Security Council.

“Over one million people have been displaced once again, desperately seeking shelter and safety, (and) 1.9 million people are now displaced across Gaza,” she said.

“I’m deeply concerned about reports of new evacuation orders issued in the area of Khan Yunis,” Kaag added.

“The war has not merely created the most profound of humanitarian crises. It has unleashed a maelstrom of human misery.”

She said that not enough aid was reaching the war-torn strip, and that the opening of new crossings, particularly to southern Gaza, was necessary to avert a humanitarian disaster.

Kaag said the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt should be reopened, and also pleaded with the international community to do more to fund relief efforts.

Aid volumes entering Gaza had “dropped significantly” since the start of the Israeli operation in Rafah, she added.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s spokesman said “yesterday’s orders for the evacuations of 117 square kilometers in Khan Yunis and Rafah governorates apply to about a third of the Gaza Strip, making it the largest such order since October.”

“An evacuation of such a massive scale will only heighten the suffering of civilians,” said the spokesman, Stephane Dujarric.

Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel — which triggered the Israeli offensive — resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

The militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza, including 42 the army says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,925 people, also mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

Israel has not specifically said there will be a military operation in southern Gaza, but so far nearly every evacuation order has heralded major battles.

Looking beyond the conflict, the UN ambassador for Security Council member Slovenia questioned whether a ceasefire would significantly ease the humanitarian crisis.

“What’s the guarantee that it will be easier to deliver aid? Because there will be still checkpoints there… there will be still no trucks,” said the envoy, Samuel Zbogar.

“There might be still problems, and big expectations, after a ceasefire.”

The slogan “All eyes on Rafah” has also been widely shared in other publications and social networks, especially X. Image credit: Twitter/@IrnaEnglish

An AI-generated image bearing the words “All eyes on Rafah” has been shared by more than 44 million Instagram accounts since Monday after a deadly Israeli strike at a camp for displaced Palestinians in the Gazan city.

The image depicts densely packed rows of tents stretching endlessly across a desert landscape overshadowed by mountains, alluding to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled there during Israel’s military campaign against Hamas.

Chilean-U.S. actor Pedro Pascal, top models Bella and Gigi Hadid, who are of Palestinian descent, and French football star Ousmane Dembele are among the celebrities to have shared it on Instagram.

The slogan “All eyes on Rafah” has also been widely shared in other publications and social networks, especially X, where the hashtag #alleyesonrafah has attracted almost one million hits, according to online monitor Visibrain.

The platform, formerly Twitter, has also seen 27.5 million messages published in three days about the attack on the southern Gazan city bordering Egypt that generated international outrage.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said an Israeli strike on the camp that sparked a fire on Sunday killed 45 people and injured 249.

Israel’s military said it had targeted and killed two senior Hamas militants, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking of a “tragic accident” that his government was investigating.

The deadliest Gaza war was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel which resulted in the deaths of 1,189 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Militants also took 252 hostages, 121 of whom remain in Gaza, including 37 the Israeli army says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 36,171 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.