Updates: Israel kills 21 children in Gaza following ceasefire announcement

Earlier, we reported that an Israeli drone had bombed a building in the Tuffah neighbourhood, in the city’s east.

Palestine’s Wafa news agency now reports that at least three people were killed in that attack, with others left wounded.

This live page is now closed.

Read about Palestinian doctors hoping the ceasefire will revive Gaza’s devastated hospitals here.

Watch an American journalist interrupt US Secretary Antony Blinken with questions about US support for Israel, before being carried away by security officers.

And listen to the will of Palestinian activist and journalist Ahmed Abu al-Roos, who was killed in Gaza hours before the announcement of a ceasefire was made, here.

We will be closing this live page soon. Here is a recap of the main events of the day.

• Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has announced he will resign from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government if it ratifies the ceasefire deal in Gaza.
• Israeli media are reporting that the cabinet is scheduled to meet on Friday to vote on the ceasefire agreement after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the vote off on Thursday.
• Israel has intensified its military operations before a ceasefire expected to take effect on Sunday, launching repeated attacks on Gaza City.
• The Israeli military said it bombed about 50 sites throughout the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours.
• Yemen’s Houthi leader Abdel-Malik al-Houthi has threatened to keep up their attacks if Israel does not respect the terms of the ceasefire with Hamas.

Al Jazeera has spoken to people in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza, ahead of an expected ceasefire on Sunday.

They hope that deal will mean an end to Israel’s 15-month war, which has killed more than 46,700 Palestinians and left thousands more missing. But their memories of the war will not go away any time soon.

“It feels like it’s Eid,” said Nahed al-Wer, a psychiatrist displaced with his family from the Bureij refugee camp.

“We hope this feeling remains forever and that we don’t see any more bloodshed. We hope that we don’t see it again and that we won’t have to live through this experience again. We all lost people. I lost my brother, my nephew, my other nephew and another relative.”

Yasmeen al-Helo, a mother originally from a suburb of Gaza City, said the time after the announcement of the ceasefire on Wednesday evening, but before its implementation, has been hard.

“Honestly, I would have preferred an immediate ceasefire because these two difficult days have been worse than the whole of the past year,” she said. “[The Israelis] want to intensify the bombings and the madness that they are doing.”

Saleh Aljafarawi, a 27-year-old journalist who was displaced from northern Gaza, said he had “lived in fear for every second”.

“There’s still two days left,” he added. “Hopefully, God will make it easy for us.”

Read more here.

US President-elect Donald Trump says the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas “better be done” before his inauguration on Monday.

Trump, who also claimed that his involvement was crucial for the negotiations, made the comments in a podcast interview with conservative radio host Dan Bongino on Thursday.

“We changed the course of it, and we changed it fast, and frankly, it better be done before I take the oath of office,” Trump said.

He added, “We shook hands, and we signed certain documents, but it better be done.”

Trump also claimed that President Joe Biden hadn’t done anything. “I’m not looking for credit. I want to get these people out,” he said, referring to the captives being held by Hamas. “We’ve got to get them out.”

Israel’s Minister for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Amichai Chikli has threatened to resign if Israel withdraws from the Philadelphi Corridor, the 14km (8.7-mile) strip of land along the border between Gaza and Egypt.

Chikli made the comment in a social media post in which he pledged to quit his post if Israeli forces leave the corridor “or if we do not resume fighting to complete the war’s goals”.

He pointed to the incoming administration of President-elect Trump in the US and referenced remarks by his designated secretary of defence, Pete Hegseth, during Senate confirmation hearings this week.

“[Hegseth said] that he supports Israel’s right ‘to destroy Hamas and eliminate it to the last man’,” Chikli wrote.

“The final word has not yet been spoken, and like a marathon, it is the last stretch that will decide.”

We defined three objectives for this war: the military defeat of Hamas, the collapse of its regime, and the return of the hostages.

There have been significant achievements in the war against Hamas so far: the senior leadership of Hamas has suffered devastating blows with the…

— עמיחי שיקלי – Amichai Chikli (@AmichaiChikli) January 16, 2025

Israeli media are reporting that the ruling Likud party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement denying that the ceasefire deal constitutes an end to the war against Hamas in Gaza.

“Contrary to [National Security Minister] Ben-Gvir’s comments, the existing deal allows Israel to return to fighting under American guarantees, receive the weapons and means of warfare it needs, maximise the number of living hostages that will be released, maintain full control of the Philadelphi Route [on the Egyptian border] and the security buffer that surrounds the entire Gaza Strip, and achieve dramatic security achievements that will ensure Israel’s security for generations,” The Times of Israel quoted the statement as saying.

The deal is expected to be approved by the security cabinet on Friday even without support from the far-right coalition partners.

However, the Likud party issued a warning, saying that “anyone who dissolves the right-wing government will be remembered as a world scoundrel”.

Three Palestinian teenagers have been injured by Israeli army gunfire during a raid on the Askar refugee camp, east of Nablus, in the occupied West Bank.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said its staff transferred the injured to the hospital after clashes broke out between the Israeli military and Palestinians.

Sources told the Wafa news agency that the army wounded two boys aged 14 and 18 in the pelvis and a 17-year-old in the knee.

Israeli media are reporting that three protesters opposing a ceasefire deal have been arrested during demonstrations in Jerusalem.

The Ynet News site said the arrests took place after clashes broke out between protesters and police officers.

Far-right parties have expressed concern that the ceasefire deal does not guarantee a full victory and may endanger Israel’s national security by releasing Palestinian prisoners in exchange for captives held by Hamas.

The research group Forensic Architecture says satellite images from January 2025 reveal widespread destruction in the Gaza Strip cities of Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoon, while tented encampments for displaced Palestinians expanded around Gaza City.

“Even after the announcement of a ceasefire, reports indicate that the Israeli military is continuing to flatten the remaining residential blocks in northern Gaza, leaving displaced civilians with no homes to return to,” the organisation said.

“If a final ceasefire agreement is not reached, Israel will likely target Gaza City next with the same tactics of systematic destruction and displacement.”

Forensic Architecture, which is based at Goldsmiths, University of London, has created a Cartography of Genocide platform, documenting in detail through satellite imagery the extent and character of Israel’s war on Gaza since October 7, 2023.

The research was presented as evidence to the United Nations Security Council, the International Criminal Court and the European Court of Human Rights.

Even after the announcement of a ceasefire, reports indicate that the Israeli military is continuing to flatten the remaining residential blocks in northern Gaza, leaving displaced civilians with no homes to return to. Satellite images from January 2025 reveal widespread… pic.twitter.com/rb7b3hNLGL

— Forensic Architecture (@ForensicArchi) January 16, 2025

The European Union mission that once monitored the Gaza-Egypt border crossing at Rafah will send a delegation to Cairo early next week to help implement the ceasefire deal, Egyptian officials say.

A spokesperson for the EU Commission, Anouar El Anouni, confirmed that the EU was “updating our plans to possibly redeploy” to Rafah. He emphasised the deployment “remains dependent on full consent” from both Israeli and Palestinian authorities.

Since Israeli forces captured the city of Rafah last May, the border has been closed to all civilians. Israeli, Egyptian and Palestinian officials have been unable to agree on the terms to reopen it.

As attention is focused on Gaza, the Palestinian Wafa news agency is reporting several raids by the Israeli army across the occupied West Bank:

• The Israeli military stormed Birzeit, north of Ramallah, closing a road and searching several vehicles. It then raided the nearby towns of al-Mazraa al-Gharbiya, Abu Shkheidam and Kober, firing live ammunition and sound bombs.
• A group of young Palestinian men were detained at a military checkpoint in the Wadi al-Hussein area, east of Hebron, while activist Areej al-Jabari was beaten by Israeli soldiers as she tried to document the incident.
• The Israeli army raided Funduq village, east of Qalqilya, and arrested three men.

Israel keeps killing Palestinians in Gaza, even as a ceasefire agreement is reached to end 15 months of war.

It’s due to come into effect on Sunday, a day before US President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

So what’s the deal, why now and what could undo it?

Lloyd Austin has said the ceasefire deal “can open a new window of hope for Israelis and Palestinians after the months of bloodshed” and “must be implemented rigorously”.

The US defence secretary said he was “pleased” to have secured the agreement after months of having “worked tirelessly” alongside Egypt and Qatar.

I am pleased that Israel and Hamas have secured a ceasefire and hostage-release deal, after months of determined diplomacy by the United States, along with Egypt and Qatar. From @POTUS on down, we have worked tirelessly as one administration to reach this deal and this day. This… pic.twitter.com/EaJJuVY86I

— Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III (@SecDef) January 16, 2025

In the dimly lit corridors of al-Amal Hospital in western Khan Younis, one of the 17 partially operational healthcare facilities in Gaza, a rare sense of hope grips the staff and patients.

Mediators have announced a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel to end the 15-month war on Gaza, and although the Israeli cabinet has yet to approve the deal, optimism is contagious.

For the first time in months, orthopaedic consultant Dr Khaled Ayyad speaks with confidence as he reassures patients of soon receiving the medication and procedures they urgently need and hospitals have been unable to provide due to Israeli restrictions on aid deliveries to Gaza.

“We’ve done the impossible. We’ve had to improvise ways to handle cases so grave in scope and so large in number and for the longest stretch of time to get this far,” Ayyad explains.

Read more here.

Israeli centrist opposition leader Yair Lapid has called on PM Benjamin Netanyahu not to back out of the ceasefire deal, reiterating his commitment to supporting the decision while the prime minister faces opposition from far-right allies that risks collapsing his government.

“I say to Benjamin Netanyahu, don’t be afraid or intimidated, you will get every safety net you need to make the hostage deal,” Lapid wrote on X. “This is more important than any disagreement we’ve ever had.”

As we’ve been reporting, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has said he would resign if the deal is approved by Israel’s government, with a security cabinet vote on the agreement reportedly set to take place on Friday.

A journalist who was ejected from a news conference by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says he was “seriously manhandled”.

Sam Husseini, an independent journalist, was one of several journalists and outspoken critics of US support for Israel who loudly questioned Blinken over the war in Gaza at a news conference on Thursday when Blinken sought to defend his handling of the 15-month-old conflict.

Husseini shouted at Blinken that he is a “criminal” and told him he belongs “in The Hague”, where the International Criminal Court is based.

Security personnel picked up Husseini and carried him out of the room as he continued to heckle Blinken while other reporters in the room recorded the incident.

I was seriously manhandled but I'm back home… thanks for all support folks.

My intention was to ask tough questions at every opportunity during the news conference which State personnel obviously cut short:

* Was the point of the May 31 announcement to block implementation of… https://t.co/1VcopsaYDg

— Sam Husseini (@samhusseini) January 16, 2025

Husseini wrote in a post on X shortly after the incident that he has been “seriously manhandled” but was back home. He said he had intended to ask Blinken a series of questions that he posted on social media instead.

Defending Rights & Dissent, a free speech group, condemned the journalist’s removal.

“We are disturbed by video showing journalist [Sam Husseini] removed from a State Dept briefing and possibly arrested,” the group wrote. “We are seeking more facts. While we know of the Biden Admin’s antipathy to press freedom, arresting an accredited reporter at a briefing would be a new low.”