An agree­ment for a four-day cease-fire in Gaza and the re­lease of dozens of hostages held by mil­i­tants and Pales­tini­ans im­pris­oned by Is­rael ap­peared to have hit a last-minute snag. A se­nior Is­raeli of­fi­cial said it would not take ef­fect un­til Fri­day, a day lat­er than orig­i­nal­ly an­nounced.

The diplo­mat­ic break­through promised some re­lief for the 2.3 mil­lion Pales­tini­ans in Gaza who have en­dured weeks of Is­raeli bom­bard­ment, as well as fam­i­lies in Is­rael fear­ful for the fate of their loved ones tak­en cap­tive dur­ing Hamas’ Oct. 7 at­tack that trig­gered the war.

Is­rael’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­er, Tzachi Haneg­bi, an­nounced the de­lay late Wednes­day, with­out pro­vid­ing a rea­son. Ne­go­tia­tors were still “work­ing to cre­ate the ap­pro­pri­ate con­di­tions” for the cease-fire and swap, ac­cord­ing to Ma­jed al-Ansari, a spokesman for the For­eign Min­istry of Qatar, which played a key role in me­di­at­ing with Hamas.

The Per­sian Gulf na­tion said ear­ly Thurs­day that a new time for the agree­ment to go in­to force would be an­nounced “in the com­ing hours.” It was orig­i­nal­ly set to be­gin Thurs­day morn­ing. The U.S. and Egypt al­so helped ne­go­ti­ate the deal.

RIS­ING TOLL IN GAZA

The Health Min­istry in Hamas-ruled Gaza, mean­while, re­sumed its de­tailed count of Pales­tin­ian ca­su­al­ties from the war, say­ing over 13,300 have been killed.

The fig­ures do not in­clude up­dat­ed num­bers from hos­pi­tals in the north, where ser­vices and com­mu­ni­ca­tion large­ly broke down ear­li­er this month, and the min­istry says some 6,000 peo­ple have been re­port­ed miss­ing and are feared to be buried un­der rub­ble.

The min­istry does not dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween civil­ians and mil­i­tants in its death tolls. Is­rael says it has killed thou­sands of Hamas fight­ers, though it has pre­sent­ed no ev­i­dence for its count.

The min­istry stopped pub­lish­ing ca­su­al­ty counts as of Nov. 11, say­ing it had lost the abil­i­ty to do so be­cause of the col­lapse of the health sec­tor in the north.

NE­TANYAHU SAYS TRUCE WON’T END WAR

The truce agree­ment had raised hopes of even­tu­al­ly wind­ing down the war, now in its sev­enth week, which has lev­eled vast swaths of Gaza, fu­eled a surge of vi­o­lence in the oc­cu­pied West Bank, and stirred fears of a wider con­fla­gra­tion across the Mid­dle East.

Air raid sirens sound­ed across north­ern Is­rael on Thurs­day as Hezbol­lah said it had fired 48 Katyusha rock­ets from south­ern Lebanon. The bar­rage came af­ter an Is­raeli strike killed five Hezbol­lah fight­ers, in­clud­ing the son of the head of the group’s par­lia­men­tary bloc.

The Is­raeli mil­i­tary said it was strik­ing the sources of the launch­es. Is­rael and Hezbol­lah, which fought a month­long war in 2006, have re­peat­ed­ly trad­ed fire across the bor­der since the war in Gaza broke out.

Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu has vowed to con­tin­ue the war against Hamas af­ter the truce ex­pires, with the goal of de­stroy­ing the group’s mil­i­tary ca­pa­bil­i­ties, end­ing its 16-year rule in Gaza and re­turn­ing all of the es­ti­mat­ed 240 cap­tives held in Gaza by Hamas and oth­er groups.

“The war is con­tin­u­ing. We will con­tin­ue it un­til we achieve all our goals,” Ne­tanyahu said, adding that he had de­liv­ered the same mes­sage in a phone call to U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden. Wash­ing­ton has pro­vid­ed ex­ten­sive mil­i­tary and diplo­mat­ic sup­port to Is­rael since the start of the war.

Is­raeli troops hold much of north­ern Gaza and say they have dis­man­tled tun­nels and much of Hamas’ in­fra­struc­ture there. Is­raeli forces on Wednes­day re­vealed what they said was a ma­jor Hamas hide­out in a tun­nel be­neath Shi­fa Hos­pi­tal.

The ter­ri­to­ry’s largest med­ical cen­ter has been at the heart of a fierce bat­tle of nar­ra­tives over both sides’ al­leged­ly reck­less en­dan­ger­ment of civil­ians. Hamas and hos­pi­tal staff de­ny Is­raeli al­le­ga­tions that Shi­fa was used as a mil­i­tant com­mand cen­ter.

Shi­fa’s di­rec­tor, Mo­hammed Abu Selmia, was de­tained by Is­raeli sol­diers, the Health Min­istry said. There was no im­me­di­ate com­ment from the army.

Is­rael, mean­while, or­dered the full evac­u­a­tion of the In­done­sian Hos­pi­tal in the north, Dr. Mu­nir al-Boursh, a Health Min­istry of­fi­cial in­side the fa­cil­i­ty, told Al-Jazeera. He said hos­pi­tal of­fi­cials were try­ing to or­ga­nize bus­es to evac­u­ate some 200 pa­tients, in­clud­ing chil­dren with burn in­juries. Fight­ing has raged out­side the hos­pi­tal for days, and hun­dreds of peo­ple have al­ready been evac­u­at­ed to the south.

Is­rael has threat­ened to launch wider op­er­a­tions in south­ern Gaza, where hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple who fled the north have crammed in­to over­flow­ing U.N.-run shel­ters with dwin­dling food, wa­ter and ba­sic sup­plies.

For Hamas, the cease-fire would pro­vide an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­group af­ter weeks of ap­par­ent­ly heavy loss­es. Hamas leader Yehya Sin­war, who is be­lieved to be alive and in hid­ing in Gaza, is like­ly to claim the re­lease of Pales­tin­ian pris­on­ers as a ma­jor achieve­ment and de­clare vic­to­ry if the war ends.

HOSTAGES TO BE FREED IN STAGES

Un­der the truce deal, 50 hostages are sup­posed to be freed in stages, in ex­change for the re­lease of what Hamas said would be 150 Pales­tin­ian pris­on­ers. Women and chil­dren would be re­leased first, and Is­rael said the truce would be ex­tend­ed an ex­tra day for every ad­di­tion­al 10 hostages freed.

The re­turn of hostages could lift spir­its in Is­rael, where their plight has gripped the coun­try. Fam­i­lies of the hostages have staged mass demon­stra­tions to pres­sure the gov­ern­ment to bring them home.

Qatar said the cease-fire would al­low a “larg­er num­ber of hu­man­i­tar­i­an con­voys and re­lief aid” to en­ter Gaza, in­clud­ing fu­el, but it gave no de­tails on quan­ti­ties. Is­rael cut off all fu­el im­ports at the start of the war, caus­ing a ter­ri­to­ry-wide black­out and leav­ing homes and hos­pi­tals re­liant on gen­er­a­tors, which have al­so steadi­ly been forced to shut down.

Is­rael’s Jus­tice Min­istry pub­lished a list of 300 pris­on­ers el­i­gi­ble to be re­leased, main­ly teenagers de­tained over the past year for rock-throw­ing and oth­er mi­nor of­fens­es.

The war erupt­ed when sev­er­al thou­sand Hamas mil­i­tants stormed in­to south­ern Is­rael, killing at least 1,200 peo­ple, most­ly civil­ians, and tak­ing scores of hostages, in­clud­ing ba­bies, women and old­er adults, as well as sol­diers, for whom Hamas is ex­pect­ed to de­mand a large num­ber of high-pro­file pris­on­ers.

More than 1.7 mil­lion peo­ple, three-fourths of Gaza’s pop­u­la­tion, have been dis­placed in the war. Many, if not most, will be un­able to re­turn home be­cause of the vast dam­age and the pres­ence of Is­raeli troops in the north.

Is­rael has barred im­ports to Gaza since the start of the war, ex­cept for a trick­le of aid en­ter­ing through Egypt’s Rafah cross­ing. Hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid groups op­er­at­ing in Gaza said the truce will prove too short and the Rafah cross­ing’s ca­pac­i­ty in­suf­fi­cient to meet ur­gent needs.

Chehayeb re­port­ed from Beirut. As­so­ci­at­ed Press re­porters Na­jib Jobain in Khan You­nis, Gaza Strip, Melanie Lid­man in Jerusalem and Jon Gam­brell in Dubai, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, con­tributed.

DEIR AL-BAL­AH, Gaza Strip (AP) —