CAIRO/GAZA - At least 17 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded in an Israeli strike in the central Gaza town of Zawayda on Saturday, health officials said, as Israel issued new evacuation orders, citing Hamas rocket fire nearby.

Israel also announced the names of two soldiers Israeli media reported were killed on Saturday afternoon when a roadside bomb exploded in the central Gaza Strip, and an air strike in the occupied West Bank that it said killed two senior Hamas militants involved in the killing of an Israeli.

Most of the people killed in Zawayda were from the same family and they included eight children and four women, according to health officials in the Hamas-administered enclave.

"They were asleep in their beds, kids and babies, then three missiles targeted their place," said Abu Ahmed Hassan, a neighbor. The owner of the house was a known merchant, he said. "There are no military activities here at all," he added.

The Israeli military said in response it had struck militant targets in an area from which rockets were fired at its troops. It said the incident was under review.

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Israel's military spokesperson posted instructions in Arabic on X on Saturday for people in parts of central Gaza, including in the Maghazi district near Zawayda, to evacuate to a designated humanitarian zone.

Reuters could not immediately verify whether Zawayda was among the places ordered to evacuate and whether people there had received the military's instructions. Residents said thousands were streaming out of Maghazi.

On Friday, two sections of the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis within what Israel has designated as a humanitarian zone were deemed dangerous by the military, which ordered people to evacuate them, saying militants had been regularly firing rockets from there.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Friday's orders, which also included other areas of the enclave outside the humanitarian zones, had affected around 170,000 displaced people.

"This is one of the largest evacuation orders affecting the zone to date and it shrinks the size of the so-called 'humanitarian area' to about 41 square kilometres, or 11 per cent of the total area of the Gaza Strip," an OCHA report said.

In the central part of the enclave, residents said Israeli tanks advanced further on Saturday into the eastern area of Deir al-Balah, an area they had not entered before, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are sheltering.

The Israeli military said that since Friday its forces had killed dozens of militants, including some who had fired rockets from central and southern Gaza.

Most of Gaza's 2.3 million population has been displaced by the 10-month-old Israeli offensive, which has laid waste to much of the enclave.

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Another Israeli airstrike on a car in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin on Saturday killed at least two more Palestinians, one an 18-year-old, the Palestinian health ministry said.

Ceasefire talks

Negotiations on a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel in the Gaza Strip will resume on Wednesday in Cairo, Egyptian sources told Xinhua on Saturday.

The delegations of the three mediators -- Egypt, Qatar, and the United States -- and Israel's delegation will attend the talks scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, according to the sources, who required anonymity.

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Meanwhile, representatives from Egypt, the United States, and Israel are currently still in Doha, which hosted the recent ceasefire negotiations earlier this week, to discuss "the technical points" of the ceasefire agreement in preparation for the talks in Cairo, said the sources.

In Doha, officials from the four countries engaged in intensive talks with the aim of concluding an agreement for a ceasefire in Gaza, including the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian detainees.

The three mediators announced in a joint statement on Friday that a "bridging proposal" had been presented to Hamas and Israel, which is consistent with the principles of UN Security Council Resolution No. 2735 that calls for an "immediate, comprehensive, and thorough" ceasefire in Gaza.

A senior Hamas official on Saturday accused Israel of obstructing all efforts to finalize a Gaza ceasefire agreement.

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"The Israeli occupation continues to obstruct all efforts to complete any ceasefire agreement," Sami Abu Zuhri said in a press statement.

Abu Zuhri also accused the US administration of "fully adopting Israel's position" and claimed that Israel is retreating from previous clauses. He noted that Washington is trying to "deter any moves" in the region against Israel.

"We are not facing a real agreement or negotiations, but rather the imposition of American dictates," he said, saying that talking about reaching a ceasefire agreement is "an illusion."

US President Joe Biden said Friday that a ceasefire deal in the Middle East is "closer than ever," but noting that "we're not there yet."

Cairo, Doha, and Washington mediated a week-long truce between Israel and Hamas that ended in late November 2023. However, subsequent mediation efforts over the past few months have not yielded ideal results.

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The ongoing Israeli military operations on Gaza since Oct 7, 2023 have killed more than 40,000 Palestinians and injured over 92,500 others, according to an update released by Gaza's health authorities on Saturday.