A truce between Israel and Hamas in Gaza will start on Friday at 7 a.m., with a the first batch of hostages to be released at 4 p.m., a spokesperson for Qatar's foreign ministry said.

Majed al-Ansari told reporters in Doha the lists of all civilians that would be released from Gaza had been agreed.

Qatar says the truce includes a comprehensive ceasefire in both north and south Gaza, and that it expects Palestinians to be released from Israeli jails as a result of the release of hostages from Gaza.

The Qatari spokesperson also confirmed that humanitarian aid will start flowing into Gaza as soon as the truce begins.

Prior to this announcement, columns of black smoke could be seen rising above northern Gaza's war zone from across the fence in Israel as daylight broke over the strip. Israel said the release of hostages, meant to be accompanied by the war's first ceasefire, would be delayed at least until Friday.

The Israeli military said it had launched 300 air strikes in the past day, and sounded sirens warning of cross-border rocket launches by Palestinian armed groups. 

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad's armed wing, al-Quds Brigades, said it targeted 11 Israeli military vehicles in Gaza.

Palestinian media reported at least 15 people killed in air strikes on Khan Younis, Gaza's main southern city, where hundreds of thousands of Gazans are sheltering from the Israeli advance in the north. Reporters could not immediately verify the toll there. 

In northern Gaza witnesses reported strikes on Kamal Adwan hospital and nearby homes.

Medical workers treated bloodied, dust-covered survivors as other residents fled through debris-strewn streets to safety.

At Gaza's biggest hospital, Al Shifa, Israeli soldiers escorted journalists into a tunnel shaft they said was part of a vast underground network Hamas has used for military purposes, a claim the group denies.

The army charged that Hamas "uses hospitals as a human shield" and led reporters into below-ground facilities with air-conditioning units, a kitchen and bathrooms, also showing piles of weapons outside it said it had recovered from battlefields.

Israeli forces arrested Al Shifa's director Mohammad Abu Salmiya along with other medical personnel, Khalid Abu Samra, another doctor and chief of the department at the hospital, told journalists.

A total of 190 patients were relocated from Al Shifa Hospital to the southern part of Gaza. Dialysis patients were transferred to Abu Youssef Al Najjar Hospital in Rafah, while the remaining individuals were moved to the European Hospital in Khan Younis, as reported by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Release of hostages imminent

The first truce in the seven-week-old war is meant to be accompanied by the release of 50 women and children hostages captured by Hamas who raided Israel on October 7, in exchange for 150 Palestinian detainees from Israeli jails.

The agreement was announced on Wednesday morning, but more than a day later an expected announcement of the official start time had yet to materialize. Mediator Qatar said it could make an announcement within hours.

Israel has said the truce could last beyond the initial four days as long as Hamas free at least 10 hostages per day. A Palestinian source has said a second wave of releases could allow as many as 100 hostages to go free by month's end.

Both sides have said they will go back to fighting once the truce is over.

Israel launched its war in Gaza after Hamas fighters burst across the border fence, killing 1,200 people and seizing about 240 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, more than 14,000 Gazans have been killed by Israeli bombardment, 5,600 of them children, according to health authorities in the Hamas-ruled territory.

Israel's public broadcaster Kan, citing an unidentified Israeli official, reported the delay in the truce had been because the agreement was not signed by Hamas and Qatar.

"No one said there would be a release tomorrow except the media ... We had to make it clear that no release is planned before Friday, because of the uncertainty that hostages' families are facing," Kan quoted a source in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office as saying.

Displaced Gazans remain skeptical

Israel's list of eligible Palestinian prisoners included 123 detainees aged under 18 and 33 women, among them Shrouq Dwayyat, convicted of attempted murder in a 2015 knife attack.

Displaced Gazans remained skeptical about the Israel-Hamas deal.

Tensions rose on Israel's northern border, after Hezbollah said five fighters, including the son of a senior lawmaker, had been killed.

Israel's army said on Wednesday evening that it had struck a number of Hezbollah targets, including a militant "cell" and infrastructure.

The White House said President Joe Biden had spoken to Netanyahu on Wednesday and "emphasized the importance of maintaining calm along the Lebanese border as well as in the West Bank."

The White House has pressed Israel not to escalate clashes with Hezbollah, for fear of sparking a wider war. 

Biden also spoke to the leaders of Qatar and Egypt Wednesday, pushing for the truce to be "fully implemented" and to "ultimately secure the release of all hostages."

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