Fighting is raging between Hamas militants and Israeli forces in parts of north Gaza and Israeli air strikes have killed dozens of Palestinians in the enclave's centre, witnesses say, as a report of a tentative hostage release deal has been denied.
The Washington Post reported that Israel and Hamas had reached a tentative United States-brokered agreement to free dozens of women and children held hostage in Gaza in exchange for a five-day pause in their war, citing people familiar with the matter.
All parties would freeze combat operations for at least five days while 50 or more hostages were released in groups every 24 hours, the Post reported.
Hamas took about 240 hostages and killed 1200 people during its deadly cross-border rampage into Israeli communities on October 7.
The pause is also intended to allow a significant amount of humanitarian aid in, the newspaper reported, adding that the outline of the deal was put together during weeks of talks in Qatar.
But both Israel's prime minister and US officials said no agreement had been hammered out yet, with a White House spokesperson saying efforts were continuing to clinch a deal.
The Post's report came as Israel appeared to be preparing to expand its offensive against Hamas militants to Gaza's southern half after air strikes killed dozens of Palestinians, including civilians reportedly sheltering at two schools.
Guerrilla-style Hamas resistance remains fierce in pockets of the heavily urbanised north including parts of Gaza City and the sprawling Jabalia and Beach refugee camps, according to Hamas and local witnesses.
Witnesses reported heavy fighting overnight between Hamas gunmen and Israeli ground forces trying to advance into Jabalia, the largest of the enclave's camps with almost 100,000 people.
Israel says the strikes have killed many militants harbouring there.
In the centre of the narrow coastal enclave, Palestinian medics said 31 people were killed, including two local journalists, in Israeli air strikes on the Bureij and Nusseirat refugee camps.
The Israeli army says Hamas uses residential and other civilian buildings as cover for command centres, weapons, rocket launch pads and a vast underground tunnel network.
The Islamist movement denies using human shields to wage war.
Hamas's armed wing, the Al Qassam Brigades, said militants killed six soldiers at close range in the village of Juhr al-Dik just east of Gaza City after ambushing them with an anti-personnel missile and closing in with machine guns.
Seven Israeli soldiers were killed in the fighting on Saturday, the military said, without giving details.
As the conflict entered its seventh week, Gaza's Health Ministry raised its death toll from the Israeli bombardment to 12,300, including 5000 children.
Israel's blitz has reduced swathes of the north to rubble, while some two-thirds of Gaza's population of 2.3 million have been displaced to the south.
A team led by the World Health Organisation that visited Al Shifa, Gaza's biggest hospital, on Saturday described it as a "death zone", days after Israeli forces seized the premises to root out an alleged Hamas command centre underneath it.
The WHO team reported signs of gunfire and shelling and a mass grave at Al Shifa's entrance and said it was making plans for the immediate evacuation of 291 remaining patients, including the war-wounded and 32 premature babies in critical condition, as well as 25 staff.
Elsewhere in the north, Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said on Saturday Israel had bombarded two UNRWA schools in Jabalia, one of which was sheltering 4000 displaced people.
"Dozens reported killed including children," he said in a post on social media platform X.
"Second time in less than 24 hours schools are not spared.
"ENOUGH, these horrors must stop."
A Hamas spokesperson said 200 people had been killed or injured at the schools.
The Israeli military did not comment.
An Israeli offensive in the south could compel hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled Gaza City to uproot again, along with residents of Khan Younis, a city of more than 400,000, compounding an already dire humanitarian crisis.
