Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a delegation of senior officials to Qatar for negotiations on a hostage release and Gaza ceasefire deal, which remains plagued by deadly clashes.
Netanyahu held a meeting in Jerusalem with US president-elect Donald Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, a representative of current US President Joe Biden and senior Israeli officials, the prime minister's office said in a statement.
Following the meeting, Netanyahu instructed the heads of the Mossad spy agency and Shin Bet security agency as well as General Nitzan Alon and foreign policy adviser Ophir Falk "to depart for Doha in order to continue advancing a deal to release our hostages", the statement said.
The United States has for more than a year been mediating talks alongside Qatar and Egypt for an end to the war in Gaza alongside the release of hostages.
The announcement was welcomed by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a campaign group for those held in Gaza, which called it "a historic opportunity to secure the release of all our loved ones".
"Leave no stone unturned and return with an agreement that ensures the return of all hostages, down to the last one," it said in a statement.
Indirect negotiations between Israel and the Islamist militant group Hamas resumed last weekend in Qatar.
The discussions are currently focused on the immediate freeing of hostages taken by the Islamist group during its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Biden, who will leave office on January 20, said on Thursday there had been "real progress" in the talks.
Trump, who will replace Biden, promised "hell to pay" if the hostages were not released by his inauguration.
Deadly strikes in Jabalia
On the ground, Gaza's civil defence agency said an Israeli air strike on a school-turned-shelter on Saturday killed eight people, including two children, while the Israeli military said it targeted Hamas militants.
Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal confirmed eight people, including two children and two women, were killed by Israeli shelling on the Halwa school in the northern Gaza city of Jabalia.
Bassal said the strike would 30 people, including 19 children, and that the Halwa school housed "thousands of displaced people".
The attack was the latest in a series of Israeli strikes on school buildings housing displaced people in Gaza, where fighting has raged for more than 14 months.
A strike on the United Nations-run Al-Jawni school in central Gaza on September 11 drew international outcry after the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said six of its staff were among the 18 reported dead.
The Israeli military accuses Hamas of hiding in school buildings where thousands of Gazans have sought shelter -- a charge denied by the Palestinian militant group.
Israeli casualties
The Israeli military, in a statement, acknowledged it conducted a strike on the facility.
It said the air force "conducted a precise strike on terrorists in a command-and-control centre" that had previously served as the Halwa school in Jabaliya, adding that it had killed three militants in a ground operation near Jabalia in northern Gaza.
It said it targeted the premises because "the school had been used by Hamas terrorists to plan and execute attacks".
The Israeli military also said on Saturday that four soldiers had died in combat in the north of the Gaza Strip.
The deaths brought to 403 the total number of soldiers killed in the Palestinian territory since October 7, 2023.
An officer and a reservist soldier were "seriously wounded" during the same incident and were taken to hospital, the military said in a statement.
Israel has been waging an intense offensive in northern Gaza since early October, saying it aims to prevent Hamas from regrouping.
At least 46,537 Palestinians, a majority of them civilians, have been killed in Israel's military campaign in Gaza since the war began, according to data provided by the health ministry. The United Nations has acknowledged these figures as reliable.
The October 7 attack that triggered it resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people on the Israeli side, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures, which includes hostages killed in captivity.
With AFP
Comments