Israel on Monday said the “intensive” phase of its war on Hamas terrorists in devastated southern Gaza would end “soon” as the United Nations chief pleaded for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire.”

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told a news conference on Monday that the stage was already being reached in northern Gaza, with Israel’s army confirming one of its four divisions in the territory completed its withdrawal on Monday.

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, three Palestinians were killed on Monday in two separate clashes with the Israeli army, the Palestinian health ministry said.

Two Palestinians in their 20s were killed in an Israeli army operation in Dura, in the southern West Bank, witnesses told an AFP journalist.

They described seeing young Palestinians throwing stones and hearing gunshots.

“All of a sudden, soldiers arrived in our town and started shooting at people without any warning,” Mohammed Rabaei, head of Dura hospital, told Agence France-Presse.

Nine people were wounded in the violence, including four in a critical condition, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

The Israeli army said a crowd of around 100 “hurled Molotov cocktails and blocks at the forces.”

Soldiers opened fire and one of those who had thrown a petrol bomb was killed, the army said.

Another Palestinian was killed further north in Tulkarem province, according to the health ministry.

Hostages dead

Meanwhile, Hamas’ armed wing on Monday released a video showing a woman hostage, speaking under duress, revealing that two men she was held captive with had been killed in captivity.

In a statement released with their video, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades blamed “the Zionist army’s bombing” for the death of the hostages.

Israel’s army condemned the video as a “brutal use of innocent hostages.”

Spokesperson Daniel Hagari rejected the cause of death as a “lie” but added: “We know that we hit targets near the location where they were held” and an investigation is underway.

Netanyahu is under intense domestic pressure to return the hostages and account for political and security failings surrounding the 7 October attacks on Israel by Hamas terrorists.

Hagit Chen said it was “hard to live, to sleep, to breathe, to eat” because she has heard nothing from her son Itay, 19, since Hamas took him captive on 7 October.

“The hostages have no time. Everyone is ill and injured,” she said in Berlin, where hostage relatives met German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Monday.