Israeli troops have blocked thousands of displaced Palestinians from in the northern parts of the Gaza Strip, amid Israeli accusations that Hamas had breached the ceasefire deal by delaying the release of specific hostages.
Israeli soldiers fired on the large crowds of Gaza residents hoping to return home several times, wounding nine people and killing two others, according to health officials at the nearby Al-Awda Hospital. The Israeli military said its troops in central Gaza had identified "several gatherings of dozens of suspects" who had advanced toward Israeli forces and "posed a threat to them," prompting its troops to fire warning shots. It said in southern Gaza it had killed a member of another militant group, called Islamic Jihad, who had also posed a threat.
Under the ceasefire's terms that took effect on Jan. 19, Israel has pulled its forces from several parts of Gaza, and continues to warn residents to keep their distance from its military units.
Meanwhile, close to the Israeli border in southern Lebanon, Israeli troops opened fire on protesters who were urging them to pull back from the area.
Under the terms of a separate peace agreement signed with the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah, Israeli forces were supposed to have fully withdrawn from Lebanese territory Sunday.
Lebanese emergency officials said more than 120 were injured and 22 people killed. Israeli military leaders said their soldiers had fired shots to warn "suspects" not to approach Israeli positions.
Israel said it had not yet withdrawn forces from the area 鈥� despite its earlier assurances it would do so this weekend 鈥� because Lebanese army units were not yet available to replace their positions, and it was not sure that Hezbollah had removed all its fighters from the area.
The Lebanese Army said its own inability to move troops into those positions was only because Israeli troops had not yet left the area, and that Israeli troops had killed at least one Lebanese army soldier.
Trump causes uproar over suggestion Gaza residents could be moved to Egypt and Jordan
President Trump separately provoked strong reaction across the Middle East when he suggested that a large proportion of Gaza's residents could be moved to Egypt and Jordan at least temporarily.
Egypt has previously pushed back on such a suggestion, and both the Jordanian government, the Palestinian Authority and militant groups including Hamas and Islamic Jihad rejected the suggestion, as did Arab-Israeli lawmakers.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Hsafadi on social media that his country's "rejection of displacement is fixed and unchangeable." A statement from the office of the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, said it "expressed its strong rejection and condemnation of any projects aimed at displacing our people from the Gaza Strip," and urged Trump to focus on "achieving peace and establishing an independent Palestinian state."
Israel's aerial bombardment and ground offensive inside Gaza has forced the vast majority of its 2.1 million residents to leave their homes, and severely damaged large parts of the territory. Those returning to their homes in recent days have frequently encountered only piles of rubble that remain.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it had told the families of the remaining hostages that Hamas had breached its agreement in two ways on Saturday. First, by not releasing a full list of its hostages and their health status, and secondly by not releasing a female hostage called Arbel Yehud, whom Israel says is a civilian and Hamas says is a soldier. "As a result" of these alleged breaches, a statement from Netanyahu's office said, "it has been decided that the movement of Gazans to the northern Gaza Strip will not be approved."
A senior military official in Hamas, who issues statements under a nom du guerre, Abu Ahmed, said the mediators 鈥� the U.S., Qatar and Egypt 鈥� had been given guarantees that Yehud was "alive and in good health."
Meanwhile Mohammed al-Hindi, the deputy head of the other major Gaza militant group, Islamic Jihad, told the Arabic news channel Al Jazeera that the group accepted Yehud would be released before next Saturday, "to remove the pretext" that it said Israel has put forward to block the return of residents to northern Gaza.
Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack. Israel's military campaign has since killed more than 47,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which says more than half of those were women and children.
Hamas also took around 250 people captive. A weeklong ceasefire in November 2023 saw more than 100 of those released, with seven more now freed over the past week, including four on Saturday.
The first six-week phase of the deal, mediated by the U.S., Qatar and Egypt, and is designed to see almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners swapped for 33 Israeli hostages, with women and children prioritized.
Israeli troops have rescued eight hostages alive, and recovered the bodies of dozens of others, a small number of which were killed during Israeli military operations.
Hamas has said it will not release the remaining hostages unless an end to the war is guaranteed, but Israeli leaders have repeatedly said they intend to continue with the conflict until Hamas is extinguished as a fighting force in Gaza.
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