Daily Times

Israel carried out deadly air strikes in the Gaza Strip as the conflict entered its tenth month on Sunday, with fighting raging across the Palestinian territory and fresh diplomatic efforts underway to halt the violence.

Israel has said it will send a delegation in the coming days to continue truce talks with Qatari mediators that began recently in Doha. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman said “gaps” remained with Hamas on how to secure a ceasefire and hostage release deal.

“It was agreed that next week Israeli negotiators will travel to Doha to continue the talks. There are still gaps between the parties,” the spokesman said in a statement on Friday. Meanwhile, the fighting in Gaza continued unabated, with the Palestinian Red Crescent saying Sunday that the bodies of six people, including two children, who were killed in Israeli strikes had arrived at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah.

Paramedics also said that six people had been killed in an Israeli strike on a house in a northern area of Gaza City.

The day before, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said 16 people had been killed in a strike on a school run by the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) that was sheltering displaced people in Nuseirat, in central Gaza.

The Israeli military said its aircraft had targeted “terrorists” operating around the Al-Jawni school. The military earlier said it had conducted operations across much of the Gaza Strip, including Shujaiya in the north, Deir al-Balah and Rafah in the south. Shujaiya is among the areas the military had previously declared to be cleared of Hamas, but where fighting has since resumed.

The Hamas press office and paramedics said four journalists working for local media outlets were killed in strikes overnight into Saturday, and UNRWA said two of its employees had been killed. UNRWA, which coordinates much of the aid delivered to Gaza, says 194 of its employees have been killed in the war. The United States, which has mediated ceasefire negotiations alongside Qatar and Egypt, has talked up the prospects of a deal, saying there is a “pretty significant opening” for both sides.

US President Joe Biden announced a pathway to a truce deal in May that he said had been proposed by Israel. It included an initial six-week truce, an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza’s population centres and the freeing of hostages held by Palestinians. Talks subsequently stalled, but a US official said Thursday that a new proposal from Hamas “moves the process forward and may provide the basis for closing the deal”.

Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan told AFP that new ideas from the group had been “conveyed by the mediators to the American side, which welcomed them and passed them on to the Israeli side”.

“Now the ball is in the Israeli court.” There has been no truce since a one-week pause in November when 80 Israeli hostages were freed in return for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. Pressure has mounted domestically for another hostage release deal, with regular protests and rallies in Israel.

The war began with Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures. The Hamas group also seized hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza, including 42 the military says are dead.