May 4, 2024 - Israel-Gaza news

Over 1 million displaced Palestinians remain on edge in the southernmost Gaza city of Rafah, where Israel has been threatening a major ground offensive for months. For most, there is simply nowhere else to go in the strip — and reoccurring Israeli strikes have put children in harm's way.

A 4-year-old and 2-year-old from one family were killed by an Israeli airstrike Tuesday, and their parents were seriously injured. The family was displaced multiple times and ended up living in a tent in Rafah, according to their grandmother.

Volunteer teacher Yasmeen Abu Matar says children are experiencing a distressed mental state, have no stability and lose focus easily.

"We work twice as hard to try and grab their attention and help them learn," she says from a tent school.

Status of possible Israeli operation: Israeli officials briefed US officials in recent days about their latest thinking on how to evacuate civilians from Rafah, according to two sources familiar with those conversations. What was shared did not resemble a final plan and only focused on the movement of civilians out of Rafah.

Watch the report below to see how children are living in Rafah (Warning: Graphic images may be disturbing for some viewers.):

CNN's Paula Hancocks contributed to this report.

United States defense officials have had to pause the construction of a pier facilitating humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza due to high winds and sea swells.

The temporary pause was necessary because the weather conditions were making it unsafe for soldiers to work on the surface of the partially constructed pier, US Central Command said in a statement.

Construction on the pier began last week.

Construction has now moved to the Port of Ashdod, one of Israel’s three main cargo ports north of Gaza, CENTCOM said. Assembly will continue there, and the system will move back to its intended location when conditions improve.

CNN previously reported that as many as 1,000 US troops will be involved in the construction of the pier system known as Joint Logistics Over the Shore, or JLOTS, which — when finished and fully operational — could provide as many as 150 trucks of aid per day to the starving population in Gaza.

US officials previously hoped the JLOTS system would be fully built by Friday.

Once the pier system is up and running, a massive container ship called the Sagamore will be the first vessel to begin ferrying humanitarian aid from Cyprus to the pier, defense officials told CNN. The Sagamore is over 600 feet long, or nearly the length of two football fields.

Humanitarian aid is desperately needed in Gaza, where a tight Israeli siege has left many of the enclave's 2.2 million people facing catastrophic levels of hunger.

As negotiators meet in Cairo on Saturday, US and Israeli officials say any potential agreement on a framework that would pair a temporary ceasefire with a release of hostages in Gaza would likely be followed by continued negotiations over the finer details of the deal. 

A final deal between the two parties is expected to take several more days to negotiate. Negotiators have made progress on the technical aspects of a potential deal, but two Israeli sources say it could take a week to finalize the deal itself.

A US official echoed this point Saturday, saying even if Hamas accepts the deal as proposed, it would take several more days to hammer out some of the details that would eventually result in a truce. Those discussions could also be difficult and stretched out. American officials continue to view the talks with cautious optimism, describing progress but still mindful that previous efforts have fallen apart at the last minute.

As Hamas met with mediators in Cairo on Saturday, Mossad Director David Barnea remained in Israel. But Israeli sources said he could quickly head to Egypt if Hamas agrees to the framework.

CIA Director Bill Burns, who has acted as a key interlocutor for the United States in the multiparty talks, is in Cairo, a person familiar with the matter says.

CNN has reached out to other mediators in the negotiations.

CNN’s MJ Lee, Alex Marquardt, Kareem Khadder, Mostafa Salem and Eve Brennan contributed to this report.

Israeli officials believe 128 hostages taken in the October 7 attacks remain in Gaza, and that at least 34 of them are dead.

The Israel Defense Forces said Friday that the remains of Elyakim Libman, who had been classified as a hostage in Gaza, were found in Israeli territory.

Israel officially considers people to be hostages, even if they are dead, until their remains are returned. 

Not all the hostages are Israeli citizens. Eight are Thai and one is Nepali.

The total number of hostages provided by Israel's military has fluctuated in the months since the attack, based on its latest intelligence.

There are an additional four hostages, two of whom are dead, who have been held in Gaza since before October 7, according to the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office.

Hostage negotiations: A Hamas delegation has arrived in Cairo Saturday to resume hostage and ceasefire talks.

The latest framework, which Israel helped craft but has not fully agreed to, calls for the release of 20 to 33 hostages over several weeks in exchange for a temporary ceasefire and the release of Palestinian prisoners. That would be followed by what sources described as the "restoration of sustainable calm," during which the remaining hostages, captive Israeli soldiers, and bodies of hostages would be exchanged for more Palestinian prisoners.

“Whoever stays until the end, will tell the story. We did what we could. Remember us.”

Dr. Mahmoud Abu Nujaila scrawled these farewell words in blue ink on a whiteboard in Al-Awda Hospital, in Jabalya, on October 20, according to Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders).

When Israel launched its military offensive in Gaza after the Hamas-led October 7 attacks, many local journalists stayed – risking their lives to tell the stories of their people. After more than 200 days of fighting, Israeli bombardment has turned neighborhoods into rubble. Families have been torn apart by deaths and forced displacement; the threat of starvation looms. At the same time, 129 of the more than 250 hostages seized from Israel by Hamas remain captive in the territory, of whom at least 34 are thought to be dead.

Trapped in the strip alongside their fellow Gaza residents, Palestinian reporters have become the eyes and ears of those suffering under the shadow of war. And with foreign media largely unable to enter, it is their photos, footage and reporting, often gathered at great personal risk, that have shown the world what is happening.

At least 97 journalists and media workers have been killed since October – 92 of whom were Palestinian – according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). This makes it the deadliest period for journalists since 1992, when the CPJ started collecting data.

Read the full story here.

A Hamas delegation has arrived in Egypt for further talks on a possible ceasefire and hostage deal, a member of the group's political bureau told CNN Saturday. 

Al-Qahera News cited the official, saying Egyptian mediators are approaching a "consensus formula on many points of disagreement."

CNN has reached out to other mediators in the negotiations.  

However, an Israeli source familiar with the negotiations told CNN Friday that Israel still has not yet gotten word that Hamas has changed its “extreme” positions.

Also in Cairo is CIA Director Bill Burns, a source familiar with the negotiations told CNN Friday. He has acted as a key interlocutor for the United States in the multiparty talks between Israel, Hamas, Egypt and Qatar.

CNN’s Jeremy Diamond in Jerusalem, Eyad Kourdi and Larry Register contributed reporting.

The death toll in the Gaza Strip has risen to at least 34,654 as a result of 211 days of Israeli military operations in the territory, the Ministry of Health in Gaza reported Saturday.

The ministry added that 32 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks in the last 24 hours.

Additionally, the ministry reported that 41 people had been injured over the same period, bringing the total number of wounded in the Gaza Strip since the conflict began to 77,908.

The ministry does not distinguish between casualties among civilians and Hamas fighters.

CNN cannot independently verify the ministry's casualty figures due to the lack of international media access to Gaza.

According to the latest data from The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) on Friday, the conflict has resulted in over 10,000 women in Gaza being killed and 19,000 injured.

Deadly Israeli airstrikes have hit residential buildings across Gaza, killing nine people.

Three people were killed and several were injured, including two children, after an Israeli airstrike targeted two residential buildings east of Rafah, according to a Gaza General Directorate of Civil Defense statement.

The Israel Defense Forces released a statement Saturday has confirmed hitting targets, saying it "is operating to dismantle Hamas military and administrative capabilities," and that "the IDF follows international law and takes feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm."

Israeli airstrikes have been targeting Rafah, where at least 1.2 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering, for weeks ahead of an anticipated ground offensive. 

Elsewhere, in northern Gaza, three people were killed and three injured after an Israeli airstrike targeted a family home in Jabalya in the early hours of Saturday morning. 

In another instance, three people were killed, including a woman, in an Israeli airstrike that hit a family home east of Al-Nuseirat Camp in central Gaza on Friday at midnight, according to the director-general at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, Iyad Issa Abu Zaher. 

CNN has reached out to the IDF about the specific airstrikes reported in northern and central Gaza.