The Israel Defense Forces carried out attacks in Lebanon on Thursday, but the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah that went into effect early the previous day mostly appeared to hold.

       The Israeli air force conducted a strike in southern Lebanon targeting suspected militants who had returned to a site from which projectiles had been fired at Israel during the war, the IDF said. Israeli troops also “operated to prevent” militants from “advancing” in southern Lebanon, it added.

       As a cease-fire took hold in Lebanon this week, the death toll continued to mount in Gaza. Three people were killed in a strike west of Gaza City, Gaza’s civil defense agency said early Friday, and Israel has prevented the main emergency rescue service in the enclave from working in the north for more than a month, it said.

       “Conditions for survival are diminishing” in Gaza’s north for an estimated 65,000-75,000 people remaining in the area besieged by the Israel Defense Forces, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which aids Palestinian refugees, said Thursday.

       The United Nations attempted 91 aid deliveries there between Oct. 6 — when Israel’s operation in north Gaza, which it says is to target regrouping militants, began — and Nov. 25, UNRWA said. All were denied or impeded, it said.

       The Israeli military agency responsible for coordinating relief in Gaza said Monday that more than 1,000 aid trucks had entered north Gaza during its intensified campaign. It has rejected findings that there is a risk of famine in Gaza’s north as “incorrect and inconsistent with the situation on the ground.”

       More than than 3,400 children throughout the Gaza Strip have been admitted for acute malnutrition in November, the U.N. humanitarian affairs office said this week. There was a “significant increase” across October in children showing swelling caused by a severe lack of protein, it added, including about three-quarters of children treated at two malnutrition stabilization centers in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza.

       TEL AVIV — When President Joe Biden vowed that the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon this week would be followed by a renewed push for a truce in the Gaza Strip, Jonathan Dekel-Chen made a deliberate effort not to get his hopes up.

       “I try to avoid the term ‘optimism,’” said Dekel-Chen, whose son, Sagui, and some 250 other Israelis were dragged by Hamas-led militants from Kibbutz Nir Oz into Gaza last October.

       And yet Dekel-Chen and members of six other families of American hostages have met for marathon sessions with Biden administration representatives, including national security adviser Jake Sullivan, and with associates of President-elect Donald Trump. They are conveying the message they’ve repeated for more than 400 days: For their loved ones, held in brutal conditions in Gaza, each passing moment could mean death.

       More than 100 people remain captive in Gaza; dozens are believed to still be alive.

       The families are pinning tenuous hopes of seeing their loved ones again on the prospect that the U.S. presidential transition period could finally bring an end to their ordeal.

       “Clearly, Hamas and the Israeli government have no intention of ending this,” Dekel-Chen said. “So we are trying to mobilize both incoming and outgoing administrations, to make every possible effort to get them to agree.”

       This is an excerpt from a full story.