Israel launched deadly airstrikes in Gaza on Saturday, including one on a UN-run school that Hamas-run officials said killed 16 people, and violence also spread along its northern border with Lebanon.
Fighting continues despite diplomatic efforts to halt the fighting, which entered its tenth month on Sunday. On Friday, Israel said it would send a delegation next week to continue talks with Qatari mediators.
In a statement announcing the move, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said “flaws” still remained with Hamas over a ceasefire and hostage release deal.
This came after a delegation led by David Barnea, head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, held the first round of talks with mediators in Doha.
“It was agreed that Israeli negotiators will go to Doha next week to continue the talks. There are still differences between the two sides,” the spokesman said.
There has been no ceasefire since a week-long pause in November, during which 80 Israeli hostages were released in exchange for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli jails.
As fighting continued, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said 16 people were killed in an attack on a school run by the United Nations 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-Jouni school.
The army earlier said it had carried out operations across most of the Gaza Strip, including Shuja’iya in the north, Deir al-Balah in central Gaza and Rafah in the south.
Shujaiya is one of the areas which the army had earlier declared to be liberated from Hamas, but now fighting has started again there.
Paramedics reported 10 people killed in a separate airstrike on a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp on Saturday.
The Hamas press office and paramedics said four journalists working for local media organisations were killed in the overnight attacks, and UNRWA said two of its staff were killed.
UNRWA, which coordinates most of the aid delivered to Gaza, says 194 of its staff have been killed in the war.
‘The ball is in Israel’s court’
The United States, which has brokered the talks with Qatar and Egypt, has discussed the deal’s prospects, saying it contains “very significant opportunities” for both sides.
US President Joe Biden in May announced a ceasefire deal, which he said was proposed by Israel.
This included an initial six-week ceasefire, Israeli withdrawal from Gaza’s population centers, and the release of hostages by Hamas.
The talks then stalled, but a US official said on Thursday that Hamas’ new proposal “moves the process forward and could provide a basis for finalising an agreement”.
Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan told AFP that the group’s new ideas were “conveyed by mediators to the American side, which welcomed them and passed them on to the Israeli side. Now the ball is in Israel’s court.”
Pressure has grown domestically for the release of the hostages, with regular protests and rallies taking place across Israel.
“It is important that we reach an agreement so that all mothers can hug their children and husbands, just as I now hug my mother every morning,” rescued hostage Almog Maayr Jan said in a recorded message addressed to a rally in Tel Aviv on Saturday.
The war began with an unprecedented Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, resulting in the deaths of 1,195 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on Israeli figures. Hamas also seized hostages, 116 of whom are still in Gaza, 42 of whom the military says are dead.
Israel has responded with a military offensive that has killed at least 38,098 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to the Hamas-ruled territory’s health ministry.
UN agencies say the war has left 90 percent of Gaza’s population homeless, destroyed most of its housing and other infrastructure, and left about 500,000 people facing “catastrophic” starvation.
The main obstacle to a ceasefire deal has been Hamas’ demand for a permanent end to the fighting, which Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition partners strongly reject.
Veteran radicals demand the release of hostages and insist the war will not end until Israel destroys Hamas’s ability to fight or govern.
Sirens and air raids
There has been almost daily cross-border firing between Israel and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement since the Gaza war began, but attacks have increased over the past month.
This has raised the fear of a major conflict between the two arch enemies, in which other countries including Iran could also be involved.
On Saturday morning, sirens sounded in northern Israel and the army said it had shot down a “suspicious aerial target” and that two “enemy aircraft” launched from Lebanon fell in open field.
The army earlier said it attacked several Hezbollah militant targets in southern Lebanon overnight, all near the border.
An Israeli drone strike targeted a vehicle in eastern Lebanon on Saturday, killing a Hezbollah officer, a source close to Hezbollah said. Israel said he was part of the group’s air defense unit.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
