AT LEAST 38 PALESTINIANS in Gaza have been killed in Israeli air strikes, hospital officials said, as Israel’s military said it had struck more than 100 targets in the embattled enclave in the past day.
The fighting came as Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was preparing to fly to Washington for talks at the White House aimed at pushing forward ceasefire efforts.
US president Donald Trump has floated a plan for an initial 60-day ceasefire that would include a partial release of hostages held by Hamas in exchange for an increase in humanitarian supplies allowed into Gaza. The proposed truce calls for talks on ending the 21-month war altogether.
Separately, an Israeli official said the country’s security cabinet had last night approved sending aid into the northern part of Gaza, where civilians are suffering from acute food shortages.
Meanwhile, in Yemen, a spokesperson for the Houthi rebel group announced in a pre-recorded message that the organisation had launched ballistic missiles targeting Ben Gurion airport overnight. The Israeli military said these had been intercepted.
Some 20 people were killed and 25 wounded after Israeli strikes hit two houses in Gaza City, according to Mohammed Abu Selmia, the director of Shifa Hospital that services the area.
In southern Gaza, 18 Palestinians were killed by strikes in Muwasi, an area on Gaza’s Mediterranean where many displaced people live in tents, officials at Nasser Hospital in nearby Khan Younis told The Associated Press. Five of the dead belonged to the same family, according to the hospital.
The Israeli military made no immediate comment on the individual strikes, but said it had struck 130 targets across the Gaza Strip in the last 24 hours.
It said the strikes targeted Hamas command and control structures, storage facilities, weapons and launchers, and that they had killed a number of militants in northern Gaza.
The ministry, which is under Gaza’s Hamas government, does not differentiate between civilians and combatants. The UN and other international organisations see its figures as the most reliable statistics on war casualties.
The strikes occur as efforts to reach a ceasefire deal appeared to gain momentum. Netanyahu’s office said his government would send a negotiating team to Qatar on Sunday to conduct indirect talks, adding that Hamas was seeking “unacceptable” changes to the proposal.
The planned talks in Qatar come ahead of Netanyahu’s scheduled visit to Washington on Monday to meet Trump to discuss the deal. It is unclear if an agreement will be reached ahead of the Israeli prime minister’s White House meeting.
Hamas has sought guarantees that the initial truce would lead to a total end to the war and withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.
Previous negotiations have stalled over Hamas demands of guarantees that further negotiations would lead to the war’s end, while Netanyahu has insisted Israel would resume fighting to ensure the militant group’s destruction.
