November 23, 2023 Israel-Hamas war

Our live coverage of the Israel-Hamas war has moved here.

Smoke billows after an Israeli strike as flares are dropped over northern Gaza on November 22.

The number of people killed in Gaza from Israeli attacks since October 7 now stands at 14,854, including 5,850 children, according to information from Hamas authorities in the strip.

Getting up-to-date information on the number of fatalities in Gaza has become harder as Israel’s massive air and ground campaign grinds on.

On Monday, the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah, which takes its data from hospitals and other sources in the Gaza Strip, put the number killed at 12,700.

In health updates since then, the Ramallah-based ministry said serious disruptions to communications networks in Gaza have made its own efforts at accurate data collection impossible.

The United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which collects and audits data from across the occupied Palestinian territories, has continued to cite the figures originating from Gaza.

On Wednesday, UN OCHA chief Martin Griffiths told CNN the UN stood by its use of statistics from the Health Ministry in Gaza, saying his team had “triangulated [the numbers] over the years to make sure we feel confident about them.”

“We don’t put these figures out without thought,” he said.

A senior adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to the fragility of the hostage agreement with Hamas, saying he is keeping his “fingers crossed” it will go ahead.

Some context: A truce between Israel and Hamas is scheduled to begin Friday at 7 a.m. local time (midnight ET), with 13 civilian hostages to be released by Hamas hours later, according to key deal negotiator Qatar. More will follow, with a total of 50 hostages expected to be freed over four days, while Palestinian prisoners are also released in waves.

The hostage release was initially supposed to take place Thursday but was delayed until Friday. Regev said he couldn’t “go into the details” of why the plan was pushed back by a day.

“All I can say is that I’m hopeful that it will happen tomorrow. Like President Biden, I’m keeping my fingers crossed,” Regev said.

Asked how confident he was that this will be the beginning of at least 50 Israeli hostages coming home, Regev said: “That’s the understanding reached. And that’s what we’re hoping for. Though it’s bittersweet, because if we get 50 home, there’s still 190 in Hamas captivity being held hostage and, of course, we want them all home.”

When pressed on whether he had confidence the deal would ultimately work, Regev said, “I don’t have a lot of confidence.”

Palestinians search for survivors after an Israeli strike in Rafah, Gaza, on November 22.

Palestinians in Deir Al Balah, in the center of the Gaza Strip, expressed hope for an end to the hostilities ahead of an expected truce beginning Friday.

“We hope for a truce, we are tired. The people of Gaza are tired,” said one woman who had fled south from Gaza City, the focus of Israel’s massive air and ground campaign.

A man told CNN he had fled to Deir Al Balah from the Al Shati refugee camp, located just north of Gaza City. He, too, said he wanted an end to the constant state of anxiety.

“[A truce] will be a good beginning, and the fear in us will go away,” he said.

All the people CNN spoke to talked on condition of anonymity.

Another man similarly addressed the mental respite a truce would provide.

“If there is a truce, we will be mentally relieved; the truce is a mental comfort,” he said.

A third man told CNN he hoped the truce would see an increase in aid entering the Strip — as the terms of the agreement lay out — as well as the restoration of electricity.

He expressed hope the four-day pause would become something permanent and that the war would end.

“We hope they will reach an agreement and that it will be an agreement that allows us to hold our head high,” he said.

Families and friends of hostages held in Gaza call for Netanyahu to bring them home during a demonstration in Tel Aviv on November 21.

In the first release of Hamas’ hostages held in Gaza, scheduled for Friday afternoon local time, 13 women and children will be freed, according to a spokesperson for Qatar’s foreign ministry, Majed Al-Ansari.

Al-Ansari could not provide details on who the hostages are, nor could he provide details on the route they might take due to safety reasons. However, many of the first 50 hostages are expected to come out through Egypt.

The Israeli government said their families and the families of hostages who will not be released had been notified. Al-Ansari also revealed that hostages from the same families will be released together in the first group.

Meanwhile, an Israeli official tells CNN a total of 39 Palestinian prisoners will be released Friday as part of the deal.

The prisoners will be taken from two jails — Damon and Megiddo, both southeast of Haifa — and driven to the Ofer prison, south of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, for final checks by the Red Cross.

Women and male teenagers up to the age of 18 are expected to make up the released prisoners.

The timing of the release is unclear, but the Israeli official said the prisoners would not be freed until the hostages from Gaza are back in Israeli hands.

Here’s what else you should know this Thursday:

Two more months of fighting: Israel’s defense minister says he expects the military operation against Hamas will continue “forcefully” after the brief truce, for at least two months.

No names of Palestinian prisoners: A Palestinian official told CNN he has not yet received a list of names of those expected to be released from Israeli prisons on Friday.

Biden hopeful 3-year-old American freed: US President Joe Biden said he has his “fingers crossed” that a 3-year-old American girl held hostage by Hamas will be freed on Friday. But he said he will not provide further updates until the deal is finished.

US will contact American hostage families: The US will contact family members of American hostages who are freed from Gaza “after we have confirmation they are departing Gaza,” a US official said.

Hezbollah fires rockets at Israel: Lebanese militant group Hezbollah fired 48 rockets at the headquarters of an Israeli infantry unit at Ein Zeitim military base earlier Thursday. In a statement, Hezbollah said it also fired a guided missile at Israeli Merkava tanks located near Al-Raheb, near the Israeli town of Shtula, and targeted Israeli infantry forces in the area.

The Israel Defense Forces said it “intercepted a number of the launches,” and later confirmed that it used helicopters and fighter jets to strike Hezbollah infrastructure and rocket launch sites in Lebanon, in response to the militant group’s attacks.

Medical aid group says 80 aid trucks entered Gaza from Egypt: The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) says it received 80 trucks that entered Gaza through the Rafah crossing on Thursday. The trucks brought food, water, medical equipment, medications and general relief equipment into Gaza, the PRCS said.

A large convoy of aid trucks is lined up at the Rafah border crossing on the Egypt-Gaza border — on standby for when a pause in fighting between Israel and Hamas begins. The United Nations anticipates that aid trucks will move into the strip “immediately” after the Israel-Hamas truce commences, an official told CNN on Thursday.  

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said a commander of Hamas’ naval forces was killed Thursday in an airstrike in Khan Younis, the largest city in southern Gaza. 

“Amar Abu Jalalah was a senior operative in Hamas’ naval forces and involved in directing several terror attacks by sea that were thwarted by the IDF,” the IDF statement read.

Another member of Hamas’ naval forces was also killed in the strike, the military said.

Israel believes it is having some success in removing senior Hamas military operatives, which a senior IDF official discussed with journalists earlier this week. 

Israel’s assessment suggested the military wing of Hamas was made up of 24 battalions, 10 of which had been “hurt significantly” by Israeli strikes since October 7, the official said.

Some battalions in the north of Gaza lost more than four of their commanders, the official said, representing a loss to those battalions of more than half their senior command. 

Among other things, this made it harder for the military leadership of Hamas to issue orders for counterattacks, the official said, because there was increasingly no one available to direct operations.

Replacing commanders in the middle of a war was not possible, the official added.

Dr. Ahmed Mokhallalati, head of plastic surgery and burns at Al-Shifa Hospital, speaks in a video on November 7.

One of the very few medical staff members still at Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza has told CNN heavy airstrikes are creating even deeper challenges for evacuating staff and patients.

Dr. Ahmed Mokhallalati said there were still hundreds of people at the hospital, describing the situation as “really terrifying here.”

Mokhallalati, who is head of plastic surgery and burns at Al-Shifa, said he was one of only two doctors at the hospital, which has seen an extensive presence of the Israeli military for more than a week.

The Israel Defense Forces have reported uncovering extensive tunnel networks used by Hamas at the hospital, whose director was detained Wednesday while in a United Nations-led convoy heading south.

Mokhallalati said the last evacuation was supposed to be on Wednesday for the remaining patients. “Unfortunately, Israel allowed the WHO and the UN to get only 14 ambulances and two buses with 20 passengers each,” he said.

Mokhallalati said the IDF had repeatedly demanded the hospital be evacuated, but he had insisted that was not possible without ambulances, as many of the patients had severe back injuries, including spinal fractures. “These patients, at least 57 of them, they should be on a stretcher,” he told CNN.

Twenty patients in wheelchairs had decided to leave the hospital on their own Thursday, he said, along with approximately 50 family members. Another 50 people who had been staying at the hospital had also left. 

Mokhallalati said that for maybe 10 days the hospital has had no electricity, no water, drinking water or fresh food. Those still there were getting by on tinned food.

Mokhallalati said the truce due to begin at 7 a.m. local time Friday was “the only hope to evacuate the patients in a proper way.”

Thirty-nine Palestinian prisoners will be released Friday as part of a deal between Israel and Hamas to secure the release of hostages from Gaza, an Israeli official has told CNN.

The prisoners will be taken from two jails — Damon and Megiddo, both southeast of Haifa — and driven to the Ofer prison, south of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, for final checks by the Red Cross.

From there they will be driven through the nearby Beitunia crossing point and on to their hometowns and villages in the West Bank.

Women and male teenagers up to the age of 18 are expected to make up the released prisoners.

The timing of the release is unclear, but the Israeli official said the prisoners would not be freed until the hostages from Gaza are back in Israeli hands.

Those hostages — which CNN has already reported number 13 women and children — are expected to be released at 4 p.m. local time (9 a.m. ET).

The official said the hostages will enter Israel at two locations, the Nitzana border crossing with Egypt, and directly via the Kerem Shalom crossing from Gaza.

Once back on Israeli territory, the freed hostages will be taken by helicopter to two hospitals close to Tel Aviv, the official added.

Smoke from Gaza City fills the sky in the distance as an Israeli tank heads towards Gaza, on November 22, in Southern Israel.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant says Israel’s military operation against Hamas will continue “forcefully” after the brief truce beginning Friday, and that the fighting is expected to go on for at least two more months. 

“A fighting of at least two more months is expected,” he added.

A tenuous agreement: The Israeli military has said the hostage handover process will be “complicated,” warning there could be changes in the deal at any moment.   

He said the Israeli army continues to fight in the Gaza Strip “at this hour,” pointing out that once the pause goes into effect, the IDF soldiers will be stationed along the “truce lines” established inside the strip. 

The truce line effectively keeps Israeli troops in northern Gaza, and they won’t move south during the pause in fighting, an IDF spokesperson told CNN.

This post has been updated with comments from an Israeli military spokesperson on the state of the hostage deal and fighting in Gaza.

CNN’s Jeremy Diamond in Sderot and Sugam Pokharel in London contributed reporting to this post.

A Palestinian official with a lead role in the planned prisoner release has told CNN he has not yet received a list of names of those expected to be freed on Friday.

Qadura Fares, the head of the Palestinian Commission for Detainees and Ex-Prisoners’ Affairs, indicated to CNN he expected about 30 to 35 people to be released tomorrow as a first group.

All prisoners would be released at the Beitunia checkpoint, which is immediately south of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, he said.

Israel has published a list of 300 names of people eligible for release in the exchange. The vast majority are male teenagers aged between 16 to 18 – children under the United Nations definition – although a handful are as young as 14.

Some 33 people on the list are women, according to a CNN count. 

US President Joe Biden crosses his fingers while responding to a question about the release of Hamas hostages after a visit to the Nantucket Fire Department on Thanksgiving today in Nantucket, Massachusetts.

US President Joe Biden told reporters he has his “fingers crossed” that a 3-year-old American girl being held hostage in Gaza will be among those released Friday in the Israel-Hamas hostage deal — but that he will not be providing any updates until the deal is finished.

“I’ll be able to talk to you guys tomorrow,” he told the traveling media pool in Nantucket, Massachusetts, after greeting first responders. “I’m not prepared to give you an update until it’s done.” 

When asked about Abigail Edan, the 3-year-old hostage, he said: “Keeping my fingers crossed.”

The president also said he won’t give up until he has freed other Americans held abroad, like Paul Whelan, the former United States Marine, and Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter, who are being held in Russia. The US classifies both as being wrongfully detained.

Posters of Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip are pictured in Jerusalem on November 5.

Israel has notified the families of the hostages set to be released on Friday, the country’s coordinator for hostages and missing persons, Gal Hirsch, said in a statement.

Hirsch said “liaison officers have informed all of those families whose loved ones appear on the list, as well as all of the hostages’ families.”

The first hostages expected to be released will include members of the same families leaving together, Qatar foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari said in a news conference earlier Thursday. 

A reminder: The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a group that sprang up in response to the Hamas attack on Israel, lists 201 Israelis believed to be alive and held hostage in Gaza since October 7.

That list of Israeli hostages includes 39 children aged 18 and under; 44 adult women and 89 adult men aged 19 to 64; and 29 people aged 65 and over. The youngest is Kfir Bibas, who is 10 months old; the oldest are Yafa Adar, Shlomo Mansour and Arye Zalmanovich, who are all 85.

The Israel Defense Forces says the estimated total number of hostages — which includes Americans and other foreign nationals — fluctuates with the latest intelligence, but stood at 236 earlier this week.

Qatar foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari delivers a press conference on November 23

Qatar will receive a list with the names of hostages expected to be released by Hamas in a “day-by-day process,” Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari said in a news conference Thursday.

Qatar will hand the names over to the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, which will in turn hand over a list of Palestinian prisoners expected to be released to the Qataris, he added.

“Whenever we have both lists confirmed, this is when we can begin with the process of getting people out,” Al-Ansari said. 

Once released, the hostages will be handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross, Al-Ansari said.

Some background: The Israel-Hamas hostage deal will see the release of 50 women and children held captive in Gaza by the militant group, according to Qatar, which mediated negotiations between Israel and Hamas.

In return, Israel will grant a “humanitarian pause” in its assault of the enclave and release some Palestinian prisoners.

The truce will begin Friday at 7 a.m. local time (midnight ET), with an initial group of 13 civilian hostages set to be released around 4 p.m. local time, Qatar said Thursday.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a group that sprang up in response to the Hamas attack on Israel, lists 39 children and 58 women believed to be alive and held hostage in Gaza since October 7. The women range in age from 19 to 85.

Eleven of them are mothers of children also being held hostage, according to the group.

The US government will contact family members of American hostages who are released from Gaza “after we have confirmation they are departing Gaza,” according to a US official. 

That confirmation will come once an American official or a trusted third party has eyes on the hostage, the official said — which in some cases may not be until the hostages are out of Gaza.

As dual Israeli-American citizens are involved in the release, it is very possible that some of their families would hear first and separately from the Israeli government. 

US officials also met earlier this week via Zoom with all of the families of the unaccounted for Americans who were available.

Smoke billows from an area targeted by Hezbollah militants on November 23, near Israel's border with Lebanon

The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah said it fired 48 rockets targeting the headquarters of an Israeli infantry unit at Ein Zeitim military base, near the town of Safed in northern Israel. 

In a statement Thursday, Hezbollah said it also fired a guided missile at Israeli Merkava tanks located near Al-Raheb, near the Israeli town of Shtula, and targeted Israeli infantry forces in the area.

Hezbollah also launched nine other attacks on Israeli military posts and soldier gatherings Thursday morning, including in Jal Alalam, Berket Risha, Al-Manara and Ramim.

The Israel Defense Forces said it “intercepted a number of the launches,” and later confirmed that it used helicopters and fighter jets to strike Hezbollah infrastructure and rocket launch sites in Lebanon, in response to the militant group’s attacks.

“In addition, an IDF helicopter, a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle), and tanks struck a terrorist cell that launched an anti-tank missile toward the area of Biranit, and the launch post from which the missile was fired.” 

Meanwhile, the Lebanese state news agency (NNA) said that on Wednesday afternoon and in the overnight hours, it recorded the highest number of Israeli artillery fire and airstrikes on southern Lebanon since this round of hostilities began on October 8.

NNA reported on Thursday that several towns along the border came under Israeli artillery fire in the morning.

Remember: Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-backed paramilitary group, is one of the central focuses of international concerns that the war between Israel and Hamas could expand into a broader conflict in the Middle East.

The group’s leadership has expressed support for Palestinians and condemned Israel’s offensive in Gaza, but has yet to directly intervene on Hamas’ behalf.

Skirmishes at the Israel-Lebanon border, however, have seen an uptick since Hamas launched its October 7 terror attacks in Israel. The crossfire is becoming increasingly deadly.

A truce between Israel and Hamas will begin at 7 a.m. local time (midnight ET) on Friday, and civilian hostages will be released at 4 p.m. local time, Qatar announced Thursday. 

Thirteen women and children will be released, according to a spokesperson for Qatar’s foreign ministry, Majed Al-Ansari.

An undisclosed number of Palestinian prisoners are also set to be released around 4 p.m. local time (9 a.m. ET), after the hostages are freed from Gaza, the Qatari spokesperson said in a news conference.

The route the freed hostages will take cannot be disclosed for safety reasons, Al-Ansari said in response to a question from CNN. Qatar will be working closely on the operation with the Red Cross and “parties of the conflict.”

The list of hostages expected to be released has been handed to the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, and talks between all mediating parties continued until this morning, Al-Ansari said.

Israel is “examining the details of the list and are in the meantime communicating with all the families of the kidnapped,” Ofir Gendelman, the Israeli prime minister’s spokesperson to the Arab world, wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Remember: A truce was slated to begin Thursday but was delayed. Under the Israel-Hamas deal, at least 50 hostages held in Gaza are to be freed.

This post has been updated with further details from the news conference.

Israel is working on getting the first group of hostages out of Gaza, but “it’s not without its challenges,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday. 

“We will continue with our war aims, mainly to eradicate Hamas,” Netanyahu said.

“There is no hope for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, and between Israel and the Arab states, if we don’t eradicate this murderous movement that threatens the future of all of us,” he added.

Cameron is meeting with both Israeli and Palestinian leaders about the crisis and the way forward, the United Kingdom’s foreign office said Thursday.

“He will discuss the need to get all hostages out of Gaza and get more aid in, as well as the need to work towards a lasting solution that delivers security and justice for Israelis and Palestinians,” the British foreign office said in a statement on social media. 

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it has arrested the director of Al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital.

Mohammad Abu Salmiya was detained for questioning “following evidence that the Shifa Hospital, under his direct management, served as a Hamas command and control center,” the IDF said in a statement Thursday.

Abu Salmiya was reportedly arrested while evacuating from the the embattled Al-Shifa hospital as part of a convoy marshalled by the World Health Organization. In response to his arrest, the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza said it had suspended cooperation with WHO and said the United Nations “bears full responsibility” for his detention.

Meanwhile, if all had gone to plan, by this time the skies in Gaza would have finally fallen silent, and some of the Israeli hostages would have returned home to their loved ones. But the Israel-Hamas truce agreement, slated to begin earlier on Thursday morning, was delayed and will not come into effect at least until Friday, diplomatic sources have told CNN.

Here are the latest developments:

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has confirmed that it has detained the director of the Al-Shifa Hospital for questioning.

Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya was earlier reported to have been arrested while evacuating the embattled Al-Shifa Hospital as part of a convoy organized by the World Health Organization.

The statement said Hamas’ “tunnel network situation under the hospital also exploited electricity and resources taken from the hospital. In addition, Hamas stored numerous weapons inside the hospital and on the hospital grounds.” 

On Wednesday, the IDF released video showing a tunnel network which it said extended from the main hospital building underneath other buildings in Al-Shifa complex.

Hamas, the Gaza Health Ministry and hospital officials have denied Israel’s claims, saying that hospitals in the Strip have only been used to treat patients.

Patients from the Indonesian Hospital arrive at the European Gaza Hospital, in Khan Younis, in this video screengrab obtained on November 22.

About 450 patients and medical staff have been forced to evacuate the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza after receiving an order from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in Gaza said Thursday. It is not clear when the evacuation took place.

Patients and staff had been told to move towards the Nasser Hospital and European Hospital, both in the south of the Gaza Strip, Dr. Munir Al-Bursh, the ministry’s director-general was quoted, in the statement as saying. He said the evacuation had been carried out in coordination with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Al-Bursh, who remains at the Indonesian Hospital, said 220 patients and wounded individuals are still trapped inside without water, medicine or food.

In a brief telephone conversation with CNN, Al-Bursh told CNN “there are more than 65 bodies that are strewn around the hospital,” which is surrounded by Israeli forces.

CNN has asked the IDF to respond to Al-Bursh’s claims.

The ICRC told CNN that it was not physically present at the Indonesian Hospital.