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Missing 3-year-old boy found dead in creek in Mississauga, Ont.: police
A three-year-old boy has been found dead a day after he went missing in a park in Mississauga, Ont., Peel police say.
Israel, the United States and Hamas have reached a tentative agreement to free dozens of women and children held hostage in Gaza in exchange for a five-day pause in fighting, the Washington Post reported, citing people familiar with the deal.
However, both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. officials said no deal had been reached yet.
The hostage release could begin within the next several days, barring last-minute hitches, according to people familiar with the detailed, six-page agreement, the paper said on Saturday.
The report comes as Israel appears to be preparing to expand its offensive against Hamas militants to southern Gaza after air strikes killed dozens of Palestinians, including civilians reported to be sheltering at two schools.
Under the agreement, all parties would freeze combat operations for at least five days while 50 or more hostages are released in groups every 24 hours, the Post reported. Hamas took about 240 hostages during its Oct. 7 rampage inside Israel that killed 1,200 people.
The pause also is intended to allow a significant amount of humanitarian aid in, the newspaper said, adding the outline for the deal was put together during weeks of talks in Qatar.
But Netanyahu told a press conference on Saturday evening: "Concerning the hostages, there are many unsubstantiated rumors, many incorrect reports. I would like to make it clear: As of now, there has been no deal. But I want to promise: When there is something to say – we will report to you about it."
A White House spokesperson also said Israel and Hamas have not yet reached a deal on a temporary ceasefire, adding the U.S. is continuing to work to get a deal. A second U.S. official also said no deal had been reached.
Israel vowed to destroy Hamas after the Oct. 7 attack. As the conflict entered its seventh week, authorities in Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip raised their death toll to 12,300, including 5,000 children.
After dropping leaflets earlier in the week, Israel on Saturday again warned civilians in parts of southern Gaza to relocate as it girds for an onslaught after subduing the north.
Raising international alarm, Israel made Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City a primary focus of its ground advance in northern Gaza.
A team led by the World Health Organization (WHO) which visited Al Shifa on Saturday described it as a "death zone" with signs of gunfire and shelling. WHO said it was developing plans for immediate evacuation of the remaining patients and staff.
Elsewhere in the north, Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini of UNRWA, the U.N. aid organization for Palestinian refugees, said on social media platform X that Israel bombarded two agency schools. More than 4,000 civilians were sheltered at one of them, he said.
"Dozens reported killed including children," he said. "Second time in less than 24 hours schools are not spared. ENOUGH, these horrors must stop."
A spokesperson for Gaza's Hamas authorities said 200 people had been killed or injured at the school. Israel's military did not comment.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whose government controls parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on Saturday said "hundreds of forcibly displaced people were killed" at the two schools in Gaza.
Abbas on Saturday appealed to U.S. President Joe Biden to intervene to stop the Israeli operation in Gaza.
Biden, who opposes a ceasefire, was looking to the end of the conflict, saying in a Washington Post opinion article that the Palestinian Authority should ultimately govern both Gaza and the West Bank.
Asked about Biden's proposal, Netanyahu told reporters in Tel Aviv the Palestinian Authority in its current form was not capable of being responsible for Gaza. Israel has not disclosed a strategy for Gaza after the war.
An Israeli offensive in the south could compel hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled Gaza City in the north to uproot again, along with residents of Khan Younis, a city of more than 400,000, compounding a dire humanitarian crisis.
The conflict has already displaced around two-thirds of Gaza's population of 2.3 million.
An advance into southern Gaza may prove more complicated and deadlier than in the north, however, with Hamas militants dug into the Khan Younis region, a senior Israeli source and two top ex-officials said.
Early Saturday, an air strike in a busy residential district of Khan Younis killed 26 Palestinians and wounded 23, health officials said.
Eyad Al-Zaeem told Reuters he lost his aunt, her children and her grandchildren in the attack. They all had evacuated from northern Gaza on Israeli army orders only to die where the army told them they could be safe, he said.
"All of them were martyred. They had nothing to do with the (Hamas) resistance," said Zaeem, standing outside the morgue at Nasser Hospital, where the 26 bodies were laid out before they were to be carried by loved ones to burials.
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi, James Mackenzie Henriette Chacar and Reuters bureaux; Writing by Doina Chiacu and Kim Coghill; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and William Mallard)
A three-year-old boy has been found dead a day after he went missing in a park in Mississauga, Ont., Peel police say.
Against the rainy Paris night sky, Celine Dion staged the comeback of her career with a powerful performance from the Eiffel Tower to open the Olympic Games.
On a tour of the wreckage at the Jasper townsite, Mayor Richard Ireland stopped at one house, the charred remains of which had collapsed into the basement. It was his home.
An Irish museum will withdraw a waxwork of singer-songwriter Sinéad O'Connor just one day after installing it, following a backlash from her family and the public, it told CNN in a statement on Friday.
A Winnipeg senior is getting soaked with a six-figure water bill.
Nearly two weeks after Donald Trump's near assassination, the FBI confirmed Friday that it was indeed a bullet that struck the former president's ear, moving to clear up conflicting accounts about what caused the former president's injuries after a gunman opened fire at a Pennsylvania rally.
Orillia OPP arrested and charged a driver with impaired driving after flashing their high beams.
A powerful Mexican drug cartel leader who eluded authorities for decades was duped into flying into the U.S., where he was arrested alongside a son of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, according to a U.S. law enforcement official familiar with the matter.
The lawyer for a former judge whose claims to be Cree were questioned in a CBC investigation says his client is not considering legal action against the broadcaster after the Law Society of British Columbia this week backed her claims of Indigenous heritage.
As fire threatened people in Jasper National Park, Colleen Knull sprung into action.
Video posted to social media on Thursday morning appears to show the charred remains of a Jasper, Alta., neighbourhood.
A Saskatchewan-born veteran of the Second World War was recently presented with France's highest national order.
A local First Nations elder and veteran is helping to bring the Ojibwe language to a well-known film for the first time.
A cat who fled her Montreal home nearly a decade ago has been reunited with her family after being found in Ottawa.
A woman in Waterloo, Ont. is out thousands of dollars for a car crash she wasn’t involved in.
A swarm of bees living in a lamppost in Winnipeg’s Sage Creek neighbourhood has found a new home for its hive.
Around 100 acres of Manitoba Crown Land near the Saskatchewan border is being returned to the Métis community.
Nova Scotia is suspending the licensed Cape Breton moose hunt for three years due to what the province is calling a “significant drop” in the population.