Israeli airstrikes killed at the least 38 Palestinians in Gaza, hospital officials said on Sunday, as Israel was sending a ceasefire negotiating team to Qatar ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s White House visit for talks toward a deal.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who will meet with Netanyahu on Monday, has floated a plan for an initial 60-day ceasefire that will include a partial release of hostages held by Hamas in exchange for a rise in humanitarian supplies allowed into Gaza. The proposed truce calls for talks on ending the 21-month conflict altogether.
Individually, an Israeli official said the safety Cabinet late Saturday approved sending aid into northern Gaza, where civilians suffer from acute food shortages. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to debate the choice with the media, declined to provide more details.
Northern Gaza has seen only a trickle of aid enter since Israel ended the most recent ceasefire in March. The Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation ‘s closest aid distribution site is near the Netzarim corridor south of Gaza City that separates the territory’s north and south.
In Yemen, a spokesperson for the Iran-backed Houthi rebels announced in a prerecorded message that the group had launched ballistic missiles targeting Israel’s Ben Gurion airport overnight. Israel’s military said they were intercepted.
Israel hits 130 targets across Gaza
Israeli strikes hit two houses in Gaza City, killing 20 Palestinians and wounding 25 others, in line with Mohammed Abu Selmia, director of Shifa Hospital, which serves the world.
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In southern Gaza, Israeli strikes killed 18 Palestinians in Muwasi, an area on the Mediterranean coast where 1000’s of displaced people live in tents, officials at Nasser Hospital within the nearby city of Khan Younis told The Associated Press. It said two families were among the many dead.
“My brother, his wife, his 4 children, my cousin’s son and his daughter. … Eight persons are gone,” said Saqer Abu Al-Kheir as people gathered on the sand for prayers and burials.
Israel’s military had no immediate comment on the person strikes but said it struck 130 targets across Gaza up to now 24 hours. It claimed its strikes targeted Hamas command and control structures, storage facilities, weapons and launchers, and that they killed quite a few militants in northern Gaza.
Rift over ending the conflict
Ahead of the indirect talks with Hamas in Qatar, Netanyahu’s office asserted that the militant group was looking for “unacceptable” changes to the ceasefire proposal.
Hamas, which gave a “positive” response late Friday to the most recent U.S. proposal, has sought guarantees that the initial truce would result in a complete end to the conflict and withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. Previous negotiations have stalled over Hamas demands of guarantees that further negotiations would result in the conflict’s end, while Netanyahu has insisted Israel would resume fighting to make sure the group’s destruction.
The conflict began when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 others hostage. Israel responded with an offensive that has killed over 57,000 Palestinians, greater than half of them women and kids, in line with Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry.
The ministry, which is under Gaza’s Hamas government, doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants. The U.N. and other international organizations see its figures as essentially the most reliable statistics on conflict casualties.
—Chehayeb reported from Beirut. Associated Press author Tia Goldenberg contributed from Tel Aviv, Israel.
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