Israeli troops mistakenly shot three hostages to death Friday in a battle-torn neighborhood of Gaza City, and an Israeli strike killed a Palestinian journalist in the south of the besieged territory, underscoring the ferocity of Israel’s ongoing onslaught.

The deaths were announced as a U.S. envoy tried to persuade the Israelis to scale back their campaign sooner rather than later.

The hostages were killed in the Gaza City area of Shijaiyah, where troops have been engaged in fierce fighting with Hamas militants in recent days. The soldiers mistakenly identified the three Israelis as a threat and opened fire on them, said the army’s chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari.

He said it was believed that the three had either fled their captors or been abandoned.

“Perhaps in the last few days, or over the past day, we still don’t know all the details, they reached this area,” Hagari said. He said the army expressed “deep sorrow” and was investigating.

Hamas and other militants abducted more than 240 people in the Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war, and the hostages' plight has dominated public discourse in Israel ever since. Their families have led a powerful public campaign calling on the government to do more to bring them home.

Demonstrations in solidarity with the hostages and their families take place nearly every day. Late Friday, hundreds of protesters blocked Tel Aviv’s main highway in a spontaneous demonstration calling for the the hostages' return.

Israeli political and military leaders often say freeing all the hostages is their top aim in the war alongside destroying Hamas.

Still, in seven weeks since ground troops pushed into northern Gaza, they have not rescued any hostages, though they freed one early in the conflict and have found the bodies of several others. Hamas released over 100 in swaps for Palestinian prisoners last month, and more than 130 are believed to still be in captivity.

The three hostages were identified as young men who had been abducted from Israeli communities near the Gaza border — Yotam Haim, 28, Samer Al-Talalka 25, and Alon Shamriz, 26.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called their deaths an “unbearable tragedy” and vowed to continue "with a supreme effort to return all the hostages home safely.”

In southern Gaza, the Al Jazeera television network said an Israeli strike Friday in the city of Khan Younis killed cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa and wounded its chief correspondent in Gaza, Wael Dahdouh. The two were reporting at a school that had been hit by an earlier airstrike when a drone launched a second strike, the network said.

Khan Younis has been the main target of Israel’s ground offensive in the south.

Speaking from a hospital bed, Dahdouh told the network that he managed to walk to an ambulance. But Abu Daqqa lay bleeding in the school and died hours later. An ambulance tried to reach the school to evacuate him but had to turn back because roads were blocked by the rubble of destroyed houses, it said.

Dahdouh, a veteran of covering Israel-Gaza wars whose wife and children were killed by an Israeli strike earlier in the war, was wounded by shrapnel in his right arm.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Abu Daqqa is the 64th journalist to be killed since the conflict erupted: 57 Palestinians, four Israelis and three Lebanese journalists.

Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour told a General Assembly meeting on the war that Israel “targets those who could document (their) crimes and inform the world, the journalists.”

“We mourn one of those journalists, Samer Abu Daqqa, wounded in an Israeli drone strike and left to bleed to death for six hours while ambulances were prevented from reaching him,” Mansour said.

The Israeli army did not immediately respond to an Associated Press request for comment about Abu Daqqa’s death.

Israel's offensive has flattened much of northern Gaza and driven 80% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million from their homes. Displaced people have squeezed into shelters mainly in the south in a spiraling humanitarian crisis.

The offensive has killed more than 18,700 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza. Thousands more are missing and feared dead beneath the rubble. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths. Its latest count did not specify how many were women and minors, but they have consistently made up around two-thirds of the dead in previous tallies.

While battered by the Israeli onslaught, Hamas has continued its attacks. On Friday it fired rockets from Gaza toward central Israel, setting off sirens in Jerusalem for the first time in weeks but causing no injuries. The group's resilience called into question whether Israel can defeat it without wiping out the entire territory.

Israelis remain strongly supportive of the war and see it as necessary to prevent a repeat of the Hamas attack, in which militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians. A total of 116 soldiers have been killed in the ground offensive, which began Oct. 27.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has expressed unease over Israel’s failure to reduce civilian casualties and its plans for the future of Gaza, but the White House continues to offer wholehearted support with weapons shipments and diplomatic backing.

Israeli airstrikes and tank shelling continued Friday, including in Khan Younis and in Rafah, which is one of the shrinking areas of tiny, densely populated Gaza to which Palestinian civilians have been told by Israel to evacuate. Details on many of the strikes could not be confirmed because communications services have been down across Gaza since late Thursday because of fighting.

In meetings with Israeli leaders on Thursday and Friday, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan discussed a timetable for winding down the intense combat phase of the war.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told Sullivan that it would take months to destroy Hamas, but he did not say whether his estimate referred to the current phase of heavy airstrikes and ground battles.

"There is no contradiction between saying the fight is going to take months and also saying that different phases will take place at different times over those months, including the transition from the high-intensity operations to more targeted operations,” Sullivan said Friday.

Sullivan also met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to discuss Gaza’s postwar future. A senior U.S. official said one idea being floated is to bring back Palestinian security forces driven from their jobs in Gaza by Hamas in its 2007 takeover.

Any role for Palestinian security forces in Gaza is bound to elicit strong opposition from Israel, which seeks to maintain an open-ended security presence there. Netanyahu has said he will not allow a postwar foothold for the Abbas-led Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The U.S. has said it eventually wants to see the West Bank and Gaza under a “ revitalized Palestinian Authority " as a precursor to a Palestinian state — an idea soundly rejected by Netanyahu, who leads a right-wing government that is opposed to Palestinian statehood.

Palestinian officials have said they will consider a postwar role in Gaza only in the context of concrete U.S.-backed steps toward statehood.

In the meeting, Abbas called for an immediate cease-fire and ramped-up aid to Gaza, and emphasized that Gaza is an integral part of the Palestinian state, according to a statement from his office. It made no mention of conversations about postwar scenarios.

The 88-year-old Abbas is deeply unpopular, with a poll published Wednesday indicating close to 90% of Palestinians want him to resign. Meanwhile, Palestinian support for Hamas has tripled in the West Bank, with a small uptick in Gaza, according to the poll. Still, a majority of Palestinians do not back Hamas, according to the survey.

The latest: Israeli soldiers mistakenly shot and killed three hostages who were being held by Hamas, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement Friday, The Washington Post reported.

The soldiers were fighting in the Shejaiya neighborhood east of Gaza City when they mistook the hostages for a threat and shot the three of them, per the Post.

• “During searches and checks in the area in which the incident occurred, a suspicion arose over the identities of the deceased,” the statement from the IDF said, per The New York Times. “Their bodies were transferred to Israeli territory for examination, after which it was confirmed that they were three Israeli hostages.”

Two of the hostages were confirmed to have been abducted on the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, per the Times.

The names of the two victims are:

• Yotam Haim.

• Samer Talalka.

• The family of the third victim asked that the name not be made public.

Jake Sullivan urges Israel to transition to ‘lower-intensity operations’ in Gaza; Biden says Israel should do more to protect civilians

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan urged Israel to “transition to the next lower intensity phase in a matter of weeks, not months,” in the Israel-Hamas War during his visit with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Thursday, Axios reported.

Since the Oct. 7 attacks, President Joe Biden’s administration has largely supported efforts of “Israel’s stated goal of ousting Hamas in Gaza,” per Axios.

Sullivan also said the U.S. needs to see evidence of “Israel’s intent to avoid civilian casualties in Gaza,” according to CNN.

U.N. voted to demand a cease-fire in Israel-Hamas War. The U.S. opposed the resolution

Wednesday, Dec. 13

The United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favor of demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas War Tuesday. The U.S. voted against the resolution, along with Israel and eight other countries. Twenty-three countries abstained from the vote.

The resolution also called for “the unconditional release of hostages and for the besieged enclave to have access to aid,” The Washington Post reported.

Not the first time the U.S. voted against a cease-fire: Last week, the U.S. vetoed a proposed United Nations Security Council demand for an immediate cease-fire.

• U.S. Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations Robert A. Wood explained to the council the U.S. would like to find a two-state solution, but it wouldn’t support an immediate cease-fire because “this would only plant the seeds for the next war — because Hamas has no desire to see a durable peace, to see a two-state solution,” Time magazine reported.

• “What is the message we are sending Palestinians if we cannot unite behind a call to halt the relentless bombardment of Gaza?” Deputy UAE U.N. Ambassador Mohamed Abushahab said to the council after Friday’s veto, per Reuters. “Indeed, what is the message we are sending civilians across the world who may find themselves in similar situations?”

What does the vote mean?: This vote “is politically significant and seen as wielding moral weight” but it is nonbinding, meaning Israel has the power to agree to a cease-fire on its own without intervention.

• The vote was called “historic” by Palestinian Ambassador to the U.N. Riyad Mansour — it “does not ‘call for’ or ‘urges’ — it demands, and we will not rest until we see compliance of Israel with this demand,” Mansour said, per CNN.

What’s happening from the U.S. perspective?: According to The Associated Press, “More than the United Nations or any other international organization, the United States is seen as the only entity capable of persuading Israel to accept a cease-fire.”

• Before the vote, President Joe Biden warned Israel that while it still has the support of the U.S., it is starting to lose global support due to its “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza, per AP.

How Israel responded: Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, requested the members to vote against the resolution, arguing that a cease-fire would equal “the survival of Hamas,” per the Post.

The latest on the fighting in Gaza: More than 18,400 Palestinians have been killed since Oct. 7, according to the Hamas-run health ministry — a large portion of those killed have been children. Ground fighting and air strikes continue in major cities, per CNN.

• Palestinian health officials warn that a public health disaster is looming due to the continuous bombing, lack of access to medicine and water in some areas of Gaza, per BBC.

• Israel says 10 Israel Defense Force soldiers were killed in northern Gaza this week, per BBC.

• The IDF also says “it has made arrests, searched 400 buildings and destroyed ‘terrorist infrastructure’ during an operation carried out in Jenin,” BBC reported.

Gaza declared one of the ‘most dangerous places’ to be by U.N., Article 99 of U.N. Charter invoked

Wednesday, Dec. 6

As the death toll in Gaza surpasses 16,000 and bomb strikes reportedly hit the area near the Jabalya refugee camp, a U.N. agency has declared it to be “one of the most dangerous places in the world,” per CNN.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East described the situation in Gaza as worsening by the minute, per CNN. As the area being targeted with bombs expands in Gaza, more Palestinians are being displaced and the ongoing humanitarian crisis is deepening.

For the first time since he took office in 2017, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres invoked Article 99 of the U.N. Charter, which allows him to “bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security,” according to Al Jazeera.

“The situation is fast deteriorating into a catastrophe with potentially irreversible implications for Palestinians as a whole and for peace and security in the region,” Guterres wrote in his letter invoking Article 99, claiming the international community shares “a responsibility to use all its influence to prevent further escalation and end this crisis.”

Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani spoke with Guterres, emphasizing the need for aid in Gaza and potential de-escalation, Al Jazeera reported.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Wednesday that Israel had Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s home surrounded.

According to The Guardian, Netanyahu recorded a video statement, saying: “Yesterday I said that our forces could reach anywhere in the Gaza Strip. Today they are encircling Sinwar’s house. His house may not be his fortress and he can escape but it’s only a matter of time before we get him.”

Israel expands offensive to southern Gaza

Monday, Dec. 4

Israel airstrikes attacked south Gaza on Monday, while the Israeli military mandated large-scale evacuations from the town amid an expanding ground assault, The Associated Press reported. The bombing of the area “is pushing Palestinians into a progressively shrinking portion of the besieged territory.”

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged Israel to refrain from actions that would exacerbate the already critical humanitarian crisis in Gaza and to protect innocent civilians from more of the ongoing war.

“For people ordered to evacuate, there is nowhere safe to go and very little to survive on,” U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said, per Reuters.

After seizing parts of northern Gaza, the Israeli military progressed into the final region previously fully controlled by Hamas in Khan Younis, the largest city in southern Gaza. Israeli authorities believe that Hamas’ military and political leaders have relocated there for refuge after fleeing from the north, according to The New York Times.

“New satellite images collected at 9 a.m. on Sunday local time and analyzed by the Times showed that the Israeli military had reached a position south of Deir al Balah, about 3 miles north of the center of Khan Younis,” the Times added. “The images showed dozens of armored vehicles in the area and berms erected to fortify their positions, vehicles and activities that closely resemble earlier Israeli operations in the north. The imagery also showed tracks and clearings, most likely from bulldozers.”

Palestinians have been left with the choice to remain in the trajectory of Israeli forces or escape within the limited bounds of southern Gaza. Humanitarian workers cautioned that this widespread displacement would worsen the severe humanitarian crisis already happening in the region.

Mirjana Spoljaric Egger, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, posted on X (formerly Twitter) Monday saying, “I have arrived in Gaza, where people’s suffering is intolerable. I repeat our urgent call for civilians to be protected in line with the laws of war and for aid to enter unimpeded. The hostages must be released and @ICRC allowed to safely visit them.”

“The Gaza health ministry also says more than 300 Palestinians have been killed and hundreds more wounded since the fighting resumed four days ago,” NPR news reported.

NPR added that the Israeli military reported it had demolished over 60% of the 800 tunnel shafts linked to Hamas, which were identified since the war began.

“The tunnel shafts were located in civilian areas, many of which were near or inside civilian buildings and structures, such as schools, kindergartens, mosques and playgrounds,” the military said in a statement on Sunday, per U.S. News and World Report.

Airstrikes resume as cease-fire ends

Friday, Dec. 1

Efforts to extend a seven-day truce failed and fighting in the Gaza Strip started at 7 a.m. local time, Al Jazeera reported.

According to The Associated Press, Israel “accused Hamas of having violated the cease-fire.”

The Gaza Ministry of Health says 109 people have died since fighting resumed. The delivery of aid to the Gaza Strip at the Rafah border crossing has also been put on hold.

In a post to X, the IDF said, “Hamas violated the operational pause, and in addition, fired toward Israeli territory. The IDF has resumed combat against the Hamas terrorist organization in Gaza.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Hamas did not meet “its obligation to release all of the women hostages today and has launched rockets at Israeli citizens,” per the BBC. Hamas claimed fighting resumed due to Israel’s refusal “to accept all offers to release other hostages”.

The Israeli army’s campaign of heavy shelling and airstrikes resumed across the Gaza Strip, including in the north, central and southern regions. Previously, Israel had declared the south to be safe, purporting the target of their military operations to be the north.

The Israel Defense Forces sent evacuation orders urging Palestinians to leave certain areas and which imply military aggression will be focused in the South, Al Jazeera reported.

According to CBS News, the IDF also created and published a map of evacuation zones in the Gaza Strip so that residents could “evacuate from specific places for their safety if required.”

The Israeli military sent SMS warnings to residents in some areas of the map saying, “The IDF will begin a crushing military attack on your area of residence with the aim of eliminating the terrorist organization Hamas ... stay away from all military activity of every kind,” per CBS News. Airstrikes began 10 minutes later.

The truce allowed for some medical aid, fuel and food supplies to be delivered, as well as hostages to be released by both Israel and Hamas. Hamas released 110 people, including 80 Israelis, while Israel released 240 Palestinians.

Qatar has expressed hopes of reinstating a pause, claiming that negotiations are ongoing.

According to CBS News, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken told reporters that he regrets the resumption of fighting, saying “Israel has one of the most sophisticated militaries in the world. It is capable of neutralizing the threat posed by Hamas while minimizing harm to innocent men, women and children. And it has an obligation to do so.”

Truce extended to a 7th day as more hostages are released

Thursday, Nov. 30

Just minutes before the temporary cease-fire was set to expire, mediators for Israel and Hamas announced that the pause in fighting would continue through Thursday.

The pause in fighting was extended for a seventh day “in light of the mediators’ efforts to continue the process of releasing hostages, and subject to the terms of the agreement,” Israel’s military stated, according to Al Jazeera.

Israel and Hamas agreed to a four-day pause in fighting on Friday, Nov. 24. Under the agreement, Hamas agreed to release 10 hostages a day in exchange for 30 Palestinian prisoners.

On Thursday, Hamas freed two Israeli hostages with more expected later in the day, The Associated Press reported.