The Israeli army bombed southern Gaza on Friday as a Hamas delegation was expected in Egypt to discuss a proposed ceasefire that would include the release of hostages held by the Palestinian Islamist movement, AFP reported.

On Thursday evening, Israeli forces intensified their strikes in the Gaza Strip, particularly in the southern city of Rafah, where Palestinians searched for survivors through piles of rubble.

“We were sitting quietly (at home, no) and suddenly we heard a loud explosion and debris started falling on us,” Taysir Abu Al-Aish told AFP. “The apartment was completely destroyed and my daughters were screaming. They were several injured (.. .) neighbors are trying to be pulled out from under the rubble, but there are martyrs,” he added.

South of Jerusalem, a Palestinian also wounded two Israelis in a knife attack before being shot dead, according to police and emergency services, and Hamas hailed the “heroic operation” carried out in “response” to the situation in Gaza.

Negotiations in Cairo according to the plan proposed by Egypt

A Hamas delegation is expected to discuss a three-step Egyptian plan in Cairo on Friday, which includes renewed ceasefires, the gradual release of Palestinian hostages and prisoners and, eventually, a ceasefire to end the fighting.

The war, sparked by the Palestinian Islamist movement’s bloody attack on Israel on October 7, has killed 21,320 people in Gaza, most of them women and minors, according to the Hamas Health Ministry.

In Israel, an attack carried out by Hamas commandos killed an estimated 1,140 people, most of them civilians, according to AFP data based on the latest official Israeli figures.

Hamas has abducted about 250 people, 129 of whom are still being held in Gaza, according to the Israeli military, which has vowed to “destroy” the Islamist movement that has ruled Gaza since 2007. Attacks on October 7.

In Cairo, the Hamas delegation will hand over to the Egyptians “the response of the Palestinian groups, which includes several comments, to their plan,” an official representative of the Islamist movement told AFP on condition of anonymity.

These remarks concern, in particular, “the modalities of carrying out exchanges and the number of Palestinian prisoners to be released, as well as obtaining guarantees of the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip,” he adds.

“We are now in contact (with mediators). I cannot provide more details. We are working to get them all back,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday at a meeting with the families of the hostages in Tel Aviv.

The oldest Hamas hostage has died

The oldest woman held hostage in the Gaza Strip, 70-year-old Israeli-American Judith Weinstein Haggai, was pronounced dead Thursday at her Kibbutz Nir Oz.

This mother of four, grandmother of seven grandchildren, and English teacher for children with special educational needs at her kibbutz grew up in Toronto and was also a Canadian citizen.

Earlier this week, her kibbutz announced the death of her husband, Gadi Haggai, 73, also a hostage in Gaza.

WHO: Gaza population remains in “great danger”

The population of Gaza remains in “grave danger”, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned, saying that “hunger and desperation” are increasing in the territory, where almost two million people (85% of the population) have been displaced, according to the UN .

Many fled several times, forced to the roads by the postponement of the fighting and the Israeli army’s orders to evacuate, but not avoiding continuous shelling.

In recent days, “at least 100,000 people” have been displaced in Rafah, in the far south of the territory, as operations in Khan Younes (south) and central Gaza intensified, according to Ocha, the UN’s humanitarian aid coordination office.

“What Israel is doing to the Palestinians, especially in Gaza, is the ‘ugliness of our century.’ Permissiveness of the West becomes complicity,” said the UN rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese.