Live updates | Israel says hostage release will not take place before Friday, as talks are ongoing

Israel's national security adviser said late Wednesday that cease-fire talks with the Hamas militant group were still ongoing, and the hostage release will not take place before Friday.

Tzachi Hanegbi gave no explanation for the delay, and it was not immediately clear when the cease-fire might begin.

The cease-fire agreement between the Hamas militant group and Israel had earlier been confirmed by both parties, along with Washington and Qatar, which helped broker the deal that would bring a temporary halt to the devastating war that is now in its seventh week.

The Israeli government said that under an outline of the deal, Hamas is to free over a four-day period at least 50 of the roughly 240 hostages taken in its Oct. 7 attack on Israel, and Israel is to release some Palestinian prisoners in exchange. Egyptian state media say the truce will begin Thursday morning. Egypt helped mediate the cease-fire agreement, which would bring the first respite to war-weary Palestinians in Gaza, where more than 11,000 people have been killed, according to health authorities.

However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late Wednesday he told U.S. President Joe Biden that he will press ahead with the war after a cease-fire expires. Some 1,200 people have been killed in Israel, mostly during the initial incursion by Hamas.

Currently:

— Truce deal raises hopes of freeing hostages in Gaza and halting worst Mideast violence in decades

— Humanitarians want more aid for Gaza, access to hostages under Israel-Hamas truce. And more time

— Analysis: Iran-backed Yemen rebels' helicopter-borne attack on ship raises risks in crucial Red Sea

— Iranian-backed militant group vows to expand conflict if U.S. airstrikes in region continue

— Pope Francis meets with relatives of Israeli hostages and Palestinians

— Find more of AP's coverage at Here's what's happening in the war:

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's national security adviser says a planned hostage-for-prisoner swap with Hamas has been delayed until at least Friday.

In a statement released late Wednesday, Tzachi Hanegbi said that contacts on the deal were continuing. ''The release will begin according to the original agreement between the parties, and not before Friday,'' he said.

The swap is to take place as part of a four-day truce expected to begin on Thursday.

Hanegbi gave no explanation for the delay, and it was not immediately clear when the cease-fire might begin.

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he has instructed the country's Mossad spy agency to track down the leadership of the Hamas militant group living in other countries outside Gaza.

''I have instructed the Mossad to act against the heads of Hamas, wherever they are,'' Netanyahu told a news conference.

Most of Hamas' top leadership lives in exile, primarily in the Gulf state of Qatar and the Lebanese capital of Beirut.

The Mossad has been accused in a series of assassinations overseas of Palestinian militants and Iranian nuclear scientists over the years.

CAIRO — The U.N. aid agency for Palestinian refugees said Wednesday that almost 1,037,000 internally displaced Palestinians were currently seeking shelter in 156 UNRWA facilities across the Gaza Strip.

In its report, the aid agency said that the number of its workers killed by the ongoing conflict in Gaza stands at 108. The information in the report was valid as of Tuesday.

Earlier Wednesday, UNRWA's Secretary General, Philippe Lazzarini, gave a press conference in southern Gaza warning that the suffering of Palestinians will only worsen with the coming of winter, and that the besieged territory is on the verge of a waterborne disease outbreak.

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, a temporary truce was agreed between Israel and Hamas that will facilitate the release of dozens of people taken hostage during the militant group's assault on Israel on Oct. 7.

The move has been welcomed by UNRWA whose leaders have continually called for a cease-fire.

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he has told President Joe Biden that he will press ahead with Israel's war against Hamas after a temporary cease-fire expires.

Netanyahu said he delivered the message to Biden in a phone call on Wednesday.

''I want to be clear. The war is continuing. The war is continuing. We will continue it until we achieve all our goals,'' Netanyahu said.

A four-day cease-fire between Israel and Hamas is expected to take effect on Thursday.

Hamas can extend the truce by releasing more of the hostages it is holding.

But Netanyahu, along with the other members of his special war cabinet, told a press conference they will resume the war until Hamas is destroyed and all of the 240 hostages it is holding are released.

SANAA, Yemen — The military arm of Yemen's Houthi rebels said Wednesday that it launched a batch of long-range large missiles toward southern Israel, including the Red Sea city of Eilat.

The Iran-backed rebel group has launched at least six aerial attacks against Israel since the conflict broke out on Oct. 7.

Last week, the Shia rebel force — which controls most of northwest Yemen — also hijacked the Bahamas-flagged Galaxy Leader as it sailed in the northern Red Sea, taking 25 crew members hostage.

Ownership details in public shipping databases associated the ship's owners with Ray Car Carriers, founded by Abraham ''Rami'' Ungar, who is known as one of the richest men in Israel. However, Israeli officials said the ship was British-owned and Japanese-operated.

The Houthi are staunch foes of Israel and have vowed to continue aerial attacks and hijackings of Israeli ships.

''We will continue to carry out military operations until the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank stops,'' the Houthi military said in a post on Telegram.

JERUSALEM — The Israeli army says it has released an award-winning Palestinian poet it detained in Gaza.

Mosab Abu Toha has been contributing pieces to western media since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, painting a dire picture of its toll on civilians through his personal experience.

His family announced Monday that Abu Toha had been arrested while evacuating to southern Gaza from his home in the hard-hit Jabaliya refugee camp.

Abu Toha last posted to X on Nov. 15, writing: ''Alive. Thanks for your prayers.''

Diana Buttu, a former Palestinian peace negotiator and friend of the family, said Abu Toha was stopped at an Israeli checkpoint and held for two days with dozens of other Palestinians at an Israeli detention center. She says he was was accused of having Hamas connections and beaten up in custody.

''He was taken out of Gaza and he was interrogated,'' she said.

She said he was released on Tuesday, apparently after the case attracted international attention.

The literary and free expression organization PEN said it was concerned about the arrest and demanded to know Abu Toha's whereabouts and the reason for his arrest. The New Yorker magazine, to which Abu Toha has contributed multiple articles, called for his safe return.

The Israeli military said Wednesday that Abu Toha had been released. It gave no further details.

Buttu said Abu Toha was safe in central Gaza after receiving medical treatment. The poet, whose son is an American citizen, is trying to leave the besieged territory.

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — More than 100 bodies were buried Wednesday in a mass grave in Khan Younis, the corpses wrapped in blue plastic sheets fastened with cable ties.

Medical workers placed dozens of bodies brought from various areas in northern Gaza, including Shifa Hospital, into a huge trench that was dug using a bulldozer.

Workers wearing surgical masks and gloves carried the bodies to the grave and performed funeral prayers.

GENEVA — International aid groups that have lined up thousands of aid trucks for Gaza say they're ready to move quickly to send in food, water and other supplies if a pause in fighting between Hamas and Israel takes hold as hoped on Thursday.

Details remain unclear about both the mechanics of getting more aid for beleaguered Palestinians in Gaza and the possible release of hostages kidnapped from Israel whose families have desperately sought their release.

The aid groups say a key ambition will be to get help to northern Gaza, which has been largely inaccessible to humanitarian shipments and where nearly all hospitals have stopped working amid a blistering military campaign by Israeli forces.

''The entire humanitarian sector is ready to scale up once everything is set,'' said Tommaso Della Longa, a spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, referring to the fine print of the announced deal.

Della Longa lamented ''bottlenecks'' that have confounded the deliveries of some humanitarian aid – though not nearly enough – into Gaza. He said IFRC hopes that a deal would include provisions to allow for a ''faster track'' of aid shipments.

The only route for international humanitarian aid into Gaza since Oct. 7 has been through the Rafah Crossing into Egypt, and planeloads of supplies have been flown into the nearby Egyptian city of El-Arish – and trucks have queued up near Gaza.

Intense Israeli inspections of trucks and cargo have slowed entry into Gaza.

WASHINGTON — A major Iranian-backed militant group in Iraq has warned it may strike additional U.S. targets after U.S. warplanes killed multiple militants in response to the first use of short-range ballistic missiles against U.S. forces at Al-Asad Air Base earlier this week.

U.S. fighter jets struck a Kataib Hezbollah operations center and a Kataib Hezbollah command and control node south of Baghdad on Tuesday, two defense officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to provide additional sensitive details of the attacks.

There were Kataib Hezbollah personnel at both sites at the time of the strikes, but the officials said they could not yet confirm whether anyone there was killed.

Militia officials in Iraq said the attack had killed eight Kataib Hezbollah members.

Kataib Hezbollah said in a statement Wednesday that it was considering ''expanding the scope of targets'' if the U.S. military continues with its strikes, adding that the attack ''will not go unpunished.''

The dangerous back-and-forth strikes have escalated since Iranian-backed militant groups under the umbrella group called the Islamic Resistance in Iraq and Syria began striking U.S. facilities on Oct. 17, the date that a blast at a hospital in Gaza killed hundreds. The attacks have continued unabated since, with at least 66 rocket and missile attacks hitting U.S. facilities and wounding at least 62 service members.