American security contractors have been enlisted to help handle the return of displaced Palestinians to the Gaza Strip’s devastated north, the next step in the cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas, according to four officials familiar with the matter.

The contractors are poised to help secure a key zone that splits Gaza in two and is known as the Netzarim corridor, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The contractors are intended to screen vehicles ferrying Palestinians from the enclave’s south for weapons, the officials said.

In the early days of the war, the Israeli military ordered a mass evacuation of northern Gaza, forcing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee south. For months, Israeli soldiers have patrolled the Netzarim corridor in part to prevent Palestinians from heading back north.

But under the terms of a 42-day cease-fire now in its fifth day, Israeli troops are set to partially withdraw over the weekend and allow Gazans to head north. The truce, which went into effect on Sunday, was mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has said for months that Israel will not allow armed fighters to return to northern Gaza. Mediators sought to craft a compromise between Israel’s security demands and Hamas’s conditions for an Israeli withdrawal.

Gazans traveling on foot will be allowed to go back without inspection, according to a copy of one of the cease-fire’s annexes shared with The New York Times. Under the deal, the private contractors are set to begin checking Gazan vehicles heading north as soon as Saturday.

But it was far from clear when the mechanism would be put into effect, and two of the officials said it might take a couple of weeks.

One of the firms assigned to the corridor is Safe Reach Solutions, which conducts logistics and planning, according to a company spokesperson, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive operations.

Safe Reach Solutions will oversee operational management of the crossings, said a second person familiar with its operations, while two other firms — one American, one Egyptian — will handle the actual inspections. It is not yet clear who will fund the contractors’ deployment.

The company’s website, which appears to have been registered in 2024 and created in 2025, contains almost no specific information on the organization’s activities, funding or staff members. The company also appears to have social media accounts on Instagram and Threads, but both are empty of content.

U.S. officials have not visited the Gaza Strip for years, both because of security concerns and the official no-contact policy with Hamas, the enclave’s de facto rulers.

Many of Gaza’s well over a million displaced people have crowded into an Israeli-designated “humanitarian zone” along the southern coast in Al-Mawasi. Most there have been living in squalid tent camps where finding enough food, clean water and protection from the elements is a daily struggle.

For months, they have hoped to return to their homes in the north — although it is far from clear how many of those homes are still standing in the wake of Israel’s relentless campaign against Hamas.

“At the very least, I’ll pitch a tent in the rubble,” said Bilal Kuheil, a resident of Gaza City who said his home had been destroyed in the early days of the war.

Israel hopes that the private security contractors will eventually form the nucleus of a larger international force, backed by Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, that will run Gaza in the future, two of the officials said. The Emiratis and the Saudis are not currently involved, they added.

But in the wake of the cease-fire, Hamas, which led the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that set off the war, has reasserted itself, sending its fighters to parade through the streets of Gaza in a show of strength. The images have dampened Israel’s hopes of toppling the militant group, despite 15 months of war in Gaza that killed over 45,000 people, according to Gazan health officials.

Aric Toler and Riley Mellen contributed reporting.

Rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo have surrounded the eastern city of Goma, in one of the sharpest escalations in years of a conflict that has pitted the Central African country against its neighbor Rwanda.

On Thursday, fighting raged between rebels from the Rwanda-backed M23 group and Congolese forces in the town of Saké, the last major army position before Goma, a provincial capital with more than 2 million people. On Tuesday, M23 captured Minova, a key town along one of Goma’s main supply routes.

Goma’s fall would be a major milestone for M23. The group captured the city and held it for two weeks in 2012, but withdrew after Rwanda came under intense international pressure to stop backing the militia. The United States and United Nations say Rwanda funds and directs the M23, charges that Rwanda has denied.

In late 2013, the Congolese Army and United Nations forces quickly defeated the rebel group, which lay dormant afterward for almost a decade.

M23 has since surged back, starting in late 2021, dealing the Congolese Army a series of defeats. At the same time, peace talks spearheaded by Angola, Congo’s southwestern neighbor, have stalled, and the fate of U.N. peacekeepers stationed in eastern Congo was until recently up in the air, with their mandate renewed in December for another year.

Goma has long been a refuge for more than a million civilians fleeing violence from M23 militiamen, Congolese forces and other armed groups in the region.

The rebels launched a major offensive in eastern Congo this year, and now the region is increasingly cut off. Rebels control the land immediately to Goma’s north and west. On its east lies the border with Rwanda. Its south is demarcated by Lake Kivu.

Rebels are also advancing on two other major eastern cities, Butembo and Bukavu, and have made the capture of Kavumu airport a main objective, according to U.N. intelligence. Government-allied troops have used the airport to support the Congolese armed forces.

Wounded civilians fleeing Saké by foot and on motorcycles arrived at a Goma hospital run by the International Committee of the Red Cross on Thursday morning. Abdourahmane Sidibé, a senior surgeon with the group, said he and his colleagues have been treating twice as many civilians over the past few weeks than they did on average last year.

“There was too much bombing,” said Hawa Amisi, 52, who fled with only a thin mattress, a bottle of water and four of her children. Ms. Amisi, who had been separated from her husband in the fighting, said she saw dead bodies lying in the street as they fled.

Bruno Lemarquis, the United Nations’ top humanitarian official in Congo, said 2025 would be “a difficult year” because humanitarian needs are likely to rise, and funds are expected to dwindle.

The United States — traditionally Congo’s largest humanitarian donor — is expected to slash aid under the new Trump administration, humanitarian officials and experts say. “Even before the new U.S. administration came in, we were told that U.S. humanitarian support would be slashed by a third,” Mr. Lemarquis said.

The conflict in eastern Congo — an area about the size of Michigan — was once labeled Africa’s World War. It has been going on since the 1990s, and has involved dozens of armed groups, of which M23 is currently dominant.

Rwanda claims M23 is fighting for the rights of Congo’s Tutsis — the ethnic group targeted by extremists from Rwanda’s Hutu majority in the 1994 genocide in which more than 800,000 people were killed.

But many Congolese see the rebel advance as an invasion of their country by a foreign power.

Now equipped with high-tech weapons, according to a recent U.N. report, M23 rebels are trying to establish a long-term presence in the region. They train police, set up courts, collect taxes and issue birth certificates, experts say, and have assassinated several traditional leaders, replacing them with officials favorable to their cause.

Most observers say M23 wants land and Congo’s valuable rare minerals such as coltan, a metallic ore used to produce tantalum, which is in smartphones and laptops. Last April, M23 seized mines in Rubaya — one of the world’s biggest sources of coltan.

As the rebels have conquered more territory over the past few years, the violence has reached new heights.

Thousands of children have been killed, maimed and forced to become child soldiers. Serious injuries caused by heavy artillery have increased. Many of the victims are children.

Sexual violence has reached extreme levels. In 2023, Doctors Without Borders treated more than 25,000 survivors of sexual violence — the highest number ever recorded in the country. Numbers for the first half of 2024 were even higher.

More than 240,000 people have been forced to flee from their homes since the start of this year, according to the United Nations’ refugee agency, as M23 rebels have launched new offensives in the eastern regions of North Kivu province, where Goma sits, and South Kivu. They join 4.6 million people who were already displaced in Congo’s east.

Saikou Jammeh contributed reporting from Dakar, Senegal.

The war of attrition between Russia and Ukraine is killing soldiers at a pace unseen in Europe since World War II.

Ukrainian artillery fire, explosive drones and mines are killing Russian troops, as they repeatedly charge across the no-man’s land. As Ukrainian positions are exposed, they are suffering heavy casualties inflicted from afar by Russian drones, shells and glide bombs.

Calculating the scale of the casualties, and therefore the war’s trajectory, is difficult: The information is a state secret in both countries. The Ukrainian government has been especially secretive, restricting access to demographic data that could be used to estimate its losses.

The most complete counts of Ukraine’s dead soldiers are made by groups abroad with biased or opaque motivations.

Working with incomplete information, experts estimate that Ukraine has suffered about half of Russia’s irreplaceable losses — deaths and injuries that take soldiers out of battle indefinitely — in the nearly three-year-old war.

Russia is still winning. Its much larger population and more effective recruitment have allowed it to replace losses more effectively, and to gradually push forward, said Franz-Stefan Gady, a Vienna-based military analyst.

“The fat man grows thinner. But the thin man dies,” Mr. Gady said.

Counting the dead

The most complete publicly available tallies of Ukrainian deaths come from two opaque websites that track obituaries, posthumous medal awards, funeral announcements and other death-related information published online.

The websites — Lostarmour.info and UALosses.org — have produced similar results: They have each individually counted about 62,000 Ukrainian soldiers who have died since the invasion.

Lostarmour and UALosses say they can only find some of the dead soldiers, because obituaries are published with a delay, and some deaths are never publicized at all. Lostarmour estimates that more than 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers had died by December, in total.

By comparison, Russian researchers and journalists have used similar methods to estimate that Russia had suffered more than 150,000 battlefield deaths through the end of November.

Lostarmour’s casualties project is run by about 10 anonymous volunteers, most of them Russian, who scour the internet and cross check information to verify its authenticity, the website’s spokesman said in an emailed response to questions. The group appears to sympathize with Russia and seeks to discredit Ukraine’s propaganda.

The person who claims to run UALosses told The New York Times in a message exchange on X that he is an IT specialist based in a Western country who started his project to address a public knowledge gap. He said he has no ties to Ukraine or Russia and works anonymously to avoid legal and personal risk. The Times was not able to confirm those personal details.

The Ukrainian government has accused UALosses of “disseminating false information,” and appears to periodically block the website. Lostarmour is blocked in Ukraine, like all other websites registered in Russia.

The websites’ secrecy or ideological bias do not necessarily invalidate their findings. The independent Russian media outlet Mediazona and the Ukrainian nonprofit Memory Book have separately verified some UALosses data by taking random tally samples and matching them with online obituaries.

A Times statistical analysis of Lostarmour’s public data has found that 97 percent of the group’s entries are accurate with 95 percent certainty, with a 5 percent margin of error.

Intelligence estimates

In a rare move, a prominent Ukrainian public figure in December contradicted his country’s official casualty claims.

The independent war correspondent Yurii Butusov announced to his 1.2 million YouTube subscribers that sources inside Ukrainian Armed Forces’s headquarters told him that 105,000 soldiers have been “irreversibly lost,” including 70,000 killed and 35,000 missing. That’s far more than the 43,000 soldiers that President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed had been killed as of Dec. 8.

Mr. Butusov added that his figure excludes units outside the Armed Forces’ command, such as the National Guard. This would increase the total casualties number further.

A military analyst familiar with Western governments’ assessments of Ukrainian casualties said Mr. Butusov’s numbers were credible. The analyst discussed sensitive information on condition of anonymity.

Western intelligence agencies have been reluctant to disclose their internal calculations of Ukrainian casualties for fear of undermining an ally. American officials have previously said that Kyiv withholds this information from even the closest allies.

Rare estimates of Ukrainian losses provided by Western officials have far exceeded Kyiv’s official figures. U.S. officials told The Times in 2023 that 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers had died by August of that year. Many of the bloodiest battles of the war have been fought since.

Mr. Butusov’s losses figure excludes severe injuries, a crucial aspect of a military’s fighting ability.

Missing in action, and in statistics

Adding to the obfuscation surrounding Ukraine’s casualties are the large number of soldiers it has declared missing in action.

About 59,000 Ukrainians were registered as missing in December, most of them soldiers, according to Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs. Mr. Butusov said in December that 35,000 Armed Forces members were listed as missing.

The military analyst familiar with Western assessments said the vast majority of missing Ukrainian soldiers are believed to be dead.

Ukrainian law makes it difficult for the relatives of missing men to declare them dead, for inheritance or other purposes. This has created a legal purgatory for the families whose loved ones have not been recovered from the battlefield, keeping the casualty tallies artificially low.

Alyona Bondar, a Ukrainian cafe worker, said she has received no information about her brother, a soldier, since he went missing on the battlefield in southern Ukraine in 2023.

“It would be better to tell the truth, including for the sake of my brother,” she said in a phone interview. “It would be better to have a grave to visit, instead of him lying somewhere in a field for a year and a half.”

Combat deaths are just one aspect of a military’s depletion. A more comprehensive measure is irreplaceable, or irreversible losses: a combined number of deaths and serious injuries that prevent a soldier fighting again.

What it means

Combining the estimates, with their caveats and shortcomings, analysts conclude that Russia loses slightly fewer than two soldiers to death and severe injury for every Ukrainian fighter who suffers the same fate.

This ratio has not allowed Ukraine to overcome Russia’s population and recruitment advantages. At current trends, Ukraine is losing a larger share of its smaller army.

There are currently more than 400,000 Russians facing about 250,000 Ukrainians on the front line, and the gap between the armies is growing, according to the military analyst familiar with Western assessments.

Russia has been able to rebuild and even expand its battered invasion force by tapping into a population that is four times larger than Ukraine’s, carrying out its first draft since World War II and enlisting felons and debtors. The government of Russia’s autocratic president, Vladimir V. Putin, is paying increasing bounties to new recruits, and recently began pressing people accused of crimes to enlist in exchange for dismissing charges.

These recruitment efforts brought Russia between 600 and 1,000 new fighters a day last year, according to Russian financial statistics. Kyiv matched this rate only briefly in that period.

North Korea also sent about 11,000 soldiers to aid Moscow’s forces in the Kursk region of southern Russia, where the Ukrainians captured territory last summer.

Mr. Zelensky’s need to contend with public opinion has led his government to delay an unpopular draft, and then left it struggling to enforce it. Some men have gone into hiding to evade conscription, or bribed draft officers to obtain an exemption. Ukraine’s tardy recruitment of convicts has produced a small fraction of fighters who had enlisted from Russian prisons.

The recruitment gap ultimately shapes the battlefield.

Russia is losing more men. But every Ukrainian casualty edges the Kremlin closer to victory.

Daria Mitiuk, Yurii Shyvala and Oleksandra Mykolyshyn contributed reporting from Kyiv and Oleg Matsnev from Berlin.

Twelve years ago, the Thai couple headed to the marriage registrar’s office to take part in a mass wedding ceremony on Valentine’s Day in Bangkok. Rungtiwa Thangkanopast wore a long white dress, and her partner, Phanlavee Chongtangsattam, a black tuxedo.

Officials welcomed them. But when they reached the registrar’s desk and presented their identity cards, which show each to be female, they were turned away. Marriage between two women, they were told, was not permitted.

On Thursday, the couple finally had the chance to wed under Thailand’s new law allowing same-sex marriages. They joined hundreds of others for a mass wedding ceremony in Bangkok as the law took effect.

“I am delighted and excited because we have been waiting for this day for a very long time,” Ms. Rungtiwa said. “For 20 years, we have loved each other and have had to hide from society’s disapproval. But now we can stand proudly.”

The mass wedding ceremony began in the morning at Paragon Hall, an event and convention center in one of Bangkok’s biggest shopping malls, Siam Paragon. It was hosted by a rights group, Naruemit Pride, whose name roughly translates to creating pride.

Dozens of officials and scores of journalists were on hand as the first weddings began in a large charcoal-gray hall, with flower-bedecked pink arches set up as backdrops for the newlyweds’ photos. The couples were wed one at a time by officials who examined their documents and formally registered them as legally married.

“Today we feel secure and safe and happy,” said Ploynaplus Chirasukon, 33, who wed her partner, Kwanporn Kongpetch, 32, in the event’s first marriage. “We are happy that we have played a part in the equal marriage law reaching this point.”

Other weddings were planned around the country, and organizers say they expect more than 1,000 same-sex couples to marry on the first day.

With the new law, Thailand becomes the first country in Southeast Asia — and only the third place in Asia after Taiwan and Nepal — to allow people of the same gender to marry each other.

Thailand is widely seen by foreigners as one of the more open places in the world for L.G.B.T.Q. people, but it took more than a decade of campaigning to legalize same-sex marriage. Many citizens of this traditional, predominantly Buddhist country remain conservative, especially older people. Even so, it is becoming increasingly tolerant on social issues, particularly in contrast to its neighbors.

In 2022, Thailand became the first nation in the region to legalize the sale and recreational use of marijuana. The government gave away 1 million marijuana plants to households as the law took effect. Since then, hundreds of weed shops have sprung up in urban areas. And last year, Parliament passed the marriage legislation, which became law with the king’s assent.

To celebrate the law, Thailand’s prime minister, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, presided over a colorful photo shoot last week with dozens of couples planning to marry.

“Jan. 23, 2025, will be the day that we all record history together, that the rainbow flag has been planted gracefully in Thailand,” she posted on her Instagram account. “Everyone’s love is legally recognized with honor and dignity.”

Thailand, whose economy depends heavily on tourism, plans to begin promoting itself internationally as an L.G.B.T.Q. tourist destination.

Among those who got married at the Bangkok ceremony were Amnad Sanghong, a manager at an import-export company, and Aphinun Manasang, a graphic designer, who have been together for 14 years.

Like many other couples, Mr. Amnad, 42, and Mr. Aphinun, 37, were motivated to marry to obtain full legal rights, including the right to make health care decisions for a loved one, and to receive the benefit of Thailand’s adoption and inheritance laws.

Wearing matching gray blazers, they came to Bangkok from their home in Prachinburi Province, about 70 miles northeast, to be part of the first-day celebration. They will hold another wedding ceremony with family and friends after they return home. “I never thought this day would come,” Mr. Aphinun said moments after they were married. “Our families are very excited because they never expected us to be able to marry.”

In 2013, when Ms. Rungtiwa, 59, and Ms. Phanlavee, 44, were turned away from the wedding ceremony, few Thais were advocating same-sex marriages.

“No one had the courage at that time to come out and demand their rights,” Ms. Phanlavee said. “The costumes were only a symbol because we knew we wouldn’t be allowed to register. They were a symbol to say that we are life partners.”

Their quest to get married started with a family health scare that made them realize they lacked the legal right to authorize care for those they considered immediate family members.

Afterward, they began trying to secure their rights through various legal maneuvers.

Their daughter, Chomchanok Thangkanopast, was born 24 years ago to Ms. Rungtiwa and her then-husband, who has since died. They knew when they married that they were gay. Both wanted a baby.

A few years later, Ms. Rungtiwa met Ms. Phanlavee and fell in love. They began living together, and though both considered Ms. Chomchanok to be their daughter, Ms. Phanlavee did not have parental rights. The couple reached a roundabout solution: Ms. Rungtiwa’s mother adopted Ms. Phanlavee, legally making her a sister to her partner and an aunt to their daughter.

When Ms. Chomchanok turned 20, Ms. Phanlavee adopted her without legal barriers.

“I am still the aunt, but I am also the mom,” Ms. Phanlavee said.

Now, with the chance to get married, their lives will be much simpler, at least in legal terms.

“Even though the society will not accept us,” said Ms. Rungtiwa, “at least the law will accept us.”

Mexico’s plan to receive thousands of its deported citizens from the United States is nothing short of ambitious. Plans are underway to build nine reception centers along the border — massive tents set up in parking lots, stadiums and warehouses — with mobile kitchens operated by the armed forces.

Details of the initiative — called “Mexico Embraces You” — were revealed only this week, although Mexican officials said they had been devising it for the past few months, ever since Donald J. Trump pledged to conduct the largest expulsion of undocumented immigrants in U.S. history.

Nearly every branch of government — 34 federal agencies and 16 state governments — is expected to participate in one way or another: busing people to their hometowns, organizing logistics, providing medical attention, enrolling the recently returned in social welfare programs like pensions and paid apprenticeships, along with handing out cash cards worth about $100 each.

Officials say they are also negotiating agreements with Mexican companies to link people to jobs.

“We are ready to receive you on this side of the border,” Mexico’s interior minister, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, said at a news conference this week. “Repatriation is an opportunity to return home and be reunited with family.”

President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico has called the expected large-scale deportations a “unilateral move” and has said she does not agree with them. But as the country with the single largest number of unauthorized citizens living in the United States — an estimated four million people as of 2022 — Mexico has found itself obligated to prepare.

The government’s plan is focused on Mexicans deported from the United States, though the president has indicated the country could temporarily receive foreign deportees, too.

Mexico is not alone in preparing: Guatemala, its neighbor to the south that also has a large undocumented population in the United States, recently rolled out a plan to absorb its own deportees.

While Mexico’s foreign minister spoke by phone to the new U.S. secretary of state, Marco Rubio, this week about immigration and security issues, Mexico and other countries in the region have said that they have not been briefed by the Trump administration on its deportation plans, leaving them to scramble in the absence of any specifics.

“The return of Donald Trump again finds Mexico unprepared to face these scenarios,” said Sergio Luna, who works with the Migrant Defense Organizations’ Monitoring Network, a Mexican coalition of 23 shelters, migrant houses and organizations spread across the country.

“We can’t keep responding to emergencies with programs that may have the best intentions but fall absolutely short,” Mr. Luna said. “What this shows is that for decades Mexico has benefited from Mexican migrants through remittances, but it has resigned this population to oblivion.”

Moreover, while the government has a fleet of 100 buses to take deportees back to their home states, many of them had fled those places to escape violence and a lack of opportunities in the first place.

Other experts wondered if the Mexican government was really prepared to deal with the long-term trauma that deportations and family separations might cause.

“These people are going to come back and their return is going to have an impact on their mental health,” said Camelia Tigau, a migration researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Even with the new facilities, existing shelters — often small and underfunded — may be hard-pressed to serve large numbers of recently arrived people along with the usual population of migrants from the south hoping to cross the U.S. border, shelter operators said, even though the number of migrants has dropped drastically in recent months.

“We can’t prepare because we don’t have financial resources,” said Gabriela Hernández, the director of the Casa Tochán shelter in Mexico City, adding that her team mostly relies on donations from everyday citizens. “So we consider this to be an emergency. It’s like an earthquake.”

Other shelter operators in Mexico City said they had not been offered extra support from the government.

Mexico City, the capital, is likely to end up receiving many of the returnees. Studies show that, when deported, people often don’t settle in their hometowns, but relocate to larger cities.

“It is a good thing that the Mexican government is planning for the initial reception,” said Claudia Masferrer, a migration researcher who has studied return dynamics from the United States to Mexico and their implications. Still, she added, “it is important to think about what will happen afterward, in the following months.”

Temístocles Villanueva, Mexico City’s chief of human mobility, said in an interview that officials planned to create new shelters and nearly triple the capital’s capacity to house migrants and deportees — to more than 3,000 from about 1,300.

Those who work with migrants and the deported are also concerned that Mexico and other countries in the region could be hobbled in their efforts to receive large numbers of people if the Trump administration halts the disbursement of foreign aid, as Mr. Rubio said on Tuesday that it was starting to do, after an executive order signed on Monday by Mr. Trump.

“That could translate into a crisis, or at least a temporary weakening of these humanitarian assistance support networks,” said Mr. Luna.

The United States is the largest funder of the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration, or I.O.M., for example, which presently offers many of the services provided to migrants and deportees, starting with the kits of sanitary supplies people receive when they step off deportation flights.

The organization, which is collaborating with Mexico’s government on the “Mexico Embraces You” plan, declined to comment.

In a cable sent to State Department employees on Tuesday, Mr. Rubio specifically mentioned migration in connection with foreign aid. In the past, such aid has also gone to programs aimed at alleviating hunger, disease and wartime suffering.

In his cable, Mr. Rubio said that “mass migration is the most consequential issue of our time” and the department would no longer take actions that would “facilitate or encourage it.”

Diplomacy, especially in the Western Hemisphere, would “prioritize securing America’s borders,” he added.

Ms. Sheinbaum has signaled that Mexico could receive deportees other than Mexicans. She said, however, that her government planned to “voluntarily” return any non-Mexican nationals — including those waiting for asylum hearings in the United States — to their countries of origin.

The question of who would pay to return them, she said, was on the list of topics she planned to discuss with U.S. government officials.

The morning the cease-fire in Gaza went into effect, masked members of Hamas’s military wing drove through the streets of Gaza in clean, white pickups, carrying Hamas flags and automatic rifles.

The militants were also carrying an unambiguous message: However weakened, Hamas survived Israel’s 15-month bombing campaign in Gaza and remains the most powerful Palestinian party in the territory.

Since the cease-fire started on Sunday, Hamas has been working overtime in an attempt to show it still controls Gaza, even after Israel killed thousands of its members and demolished its tunnels and weapons factories in retaliation for the Oct. 7, 2023, cross-border attack that killed an estimated 1,200 people.

Throughout the war, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has vowed to eliminate Hamas, but he never offered a plan for a realistic alternative that could take control of Gaza, leaving behind a vacuum that the armed group filled.

Even for many residents of Gaza, however, the swift re-emergence of the fighters, some in official uniforms, was a surprise.

“They came out of hiding in a snap of a finger,” said Mohammed, 24, who requested his last name be withheld to avoid possible retribution from Hamas. “We had no idea where these people were during the war.”

Later on the first day of the cease-fire, dozens of Hamas militants turned up at Saraya Square in Gaza City to hand over three hostages to the Red Cross for release to Israel, the first of 33 to be freed as part of the deal. The appearance of the militants didn’t suggest they were on their last legs: They appeared to be wearing clean uniforms, in good shape and driving decent cars.

It is not clear just how many fighters, police officers, bureaucrats and political leaders survived the war or just where the militants had been hiding. But by showcasing the handover in such a public way, Hamas made clear that it was still standing in a part of Gaza that had seen some of the most devastating bombing attacks of the war.

“We’re talking about an area that was essentially plowed by the Israelis,” said Mkhaimar Abusada, a professor of political science from Gaza City who is now a visiting scholar at Northwestern University.

Israeli officials have said that they stand behind their goal of dismantling Hamas’s military wing and government, suggesting that they could resume the war after the remaining 30 hostages, of roughly 100 still held in Gaza, are freed over the coming weeks.

Despite its show of force, Hamas likely hopes to relieve itself of the daily burdens of administration and reconstruction of Gaza, but it wants any future arrangement for the territory to leave it as the top security power, and therefore, the main decision maker, Ghaith al-Omari, an expert on Palestinian affairs said. Hamas probably has to make some concessions to enable enough aid to enter Gaza for reconstruction.

Since the cease-fire, Hamas’s government has attempted to impose some sense of security, sending police forces to the streets, directing traffic, protecting aid trucks and offering a degree of law and order, residents say.

On Monday in Gaza City, a senior official in the Hamas-run Interior Ministry identified as Gen. Mahmoud Abu Watfa toured the city center in plain clothes as Gazan journalists took pictures of armed internal security forces participating in a procession.

“The picture is clear,” General Abu Watfa told a reporter. “The ones controlling security, protecting citizens and safeguarding the internal front are the forces of the Interior Ministry.”

Challenges are still evident. An official in Hamas’s internal security service, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, noted that many security workers in Gaza City were using paper records instead of computers, and some were reporting to work at a bombed-out headquarters by foot because Israel had destroyed almost every police car in the city.

The bomb disposal unit in Gaza City, the official said, was struggling to defuse unexploded bombs.

“Hamas is much weaker than it was before Oct. 7,” said Michael Milshtein, a former military intelligence analyst specializing in Palestinian affairs. “But it’s totally clear that it can impose its sovereignty everywhere in Gaza.”

Municipalities in Gaza that coordinate closely with Hamas’s government have sent workers to clear rubble, remove piles of trash and survey damage to infrastructure. In Rafah, the municipal council convened a meeting in a tent outfitted with an official city flag, a desk and chairs, according to a post it shared on social media.

In an interview, Mousa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas official, crowed that Israel had failed to destroy Hamas. “They tried to uproot these people and they didn’t succeed,” he said. “They were steadfast on the ground for 470 days.”

Hamas, analysts said, was trying to make clear in its recent moves that it must have an influential role in discussions about the “day after,” referring to the future administration of Gaza.

“Their message to everyone is, ‘You can’t exclude us from the day after,’” said Mr. al-Omari, the Palestinian affairs expert.

Hamas leaders have indeed expressed readiness to give up civilian governance in Gaza, but without dismantling its military wing — a dynamic that would be similar to Hezbollah’s role in Lebanon before its last conflict with Israel.

The United States has said that a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority, which now has limited autonomy in governing the Israeli-occupied West Bank, should take over Gaza, but Mr. Netanyahu has rejected the idea. The authority governed Gaza until 2007, when Hamas forcibly took over in a coup after winning a majority in parliamentary elections.

On Sunday, Gideon Saar, the Israeli foreign minister, told reporters that Hamas’s rule was dangerous for Israel’s security and emphasized that Israel had not agreed to a permanent cease-fire deal that leaves Hamas in control of Gaza.

While some analysts say Israel could eventually remove Hamas from power, others say it would struggle to resume the war in the face of international pressure. And even if it does, those analysts say, Israeli forces would face immense challenges in uprooting Hamas from Gaza without carrying out a direct occupation.

In Gaza, supporters of Hamas said they felt reassured by its show of force this week. But many people without allegiances to the group worried that if it remained in power, they would be subject to its heavy-handed rule and that there would be another war, sooner or later.

“It may take Hamas time to reach a point where it will provoke Israel into another major war,” said Alaa, 28, who has been sheltering in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, and whose last name is being withheld to avoid reprisals.

“As long as it’s in power, it’s only a matter of time,” he added. “It’s hard to reach any other conclusion other than there’s no future here.”