Israel launched deadly airstrikes in the Gaza Strip on Sunday as the war entered its 10th month, with fighting raging across the Palestinian territory and new diplomatic efforts underway to stop the violence.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement fired 20 rockets into northern Israel, wounding one person; the latest cross-border attack was a show of solidarity with Gaza’s Palestinian group Hamas.
Efforts are underway to reach a ceasefire that mediators from the United States, Qatar and Egypt hope will avert the deadliest Gaza war yet, which has caused massive civilian casualties and devastation in the coastal region since a Hamas attack on Israel on October 7.
Egypt’s Al-Qahera News, citing an unnamed high-level official source, reported that Cairo is hosting Israeli and US delegations “to discuss the remaining points” for a ceasefire and hostage release deal.
A news report late Saturday said mediators were in contact with Hamas “amidst intensive meetings with all parties this week” for a ceasefire, though it gave no further details or dates.
Israel has also said it would send a delegation in the coming days to continue talks with Qatari mediators, though a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday that “differences” still remained with Hamas.
US President Joe Biden announced a plan in late May that included an initial six-week ceasefire and a swap of hostages for Palestinian prisoners.
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”, adding that “the ball is now in Israel’s court”.
Heavy clashes
Fighting and bombing continued in besieged Gaza on Sunday, with medics and emergency services in the Hamas-run territory reporting more people killed in multiple attacks.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said the bodies of six people, including two children, were taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah.
And paramedics said six people were killed in an attack on a house in Gaza City, and three were killed elsewhere in Gaza’s largest urban area.
Israeli drones are firing at Gaza City’s Shuja’iya district, which has been largely evacuated and witnessing heavy fighting for the past two weeks, an AFP correspondent reported.
The Israeli military said that in Shuja’iyya its “troops killed several terrorists, destroyed terrorist infrastructure and recovered a number of weapons, including explosive devices, AK-47 rifles, machine guns and pistols.”
It also said 30 “terrorists” had been killed in the past day in far southern Rafah and that Israeli forces had carried out an operation in nearby Khan Younis, where Hamas had taken up positions in a municipal building.
On Saturday, the 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, central Gaza.
The Israeli military said its aircraft had targeted “terrorists” operating around the al-Jouni school.
‘Horrific hunger’
The war began on October 7 with an unprecedented Hamas attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on Israeli data.
Hamas has also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain 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 data from the Hamas-ruled territory’s health ministry.
UN agencies say the war has left 90 percent of Gaza’s population homeless, with about 500,000 people facing “catastrophic” hunger and most hospitals closed.
“The situation is very difficult,” said Dr. Mohammed Salha, acting director of Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia.
“The hospital does not have fuel to function. We run a small generator for only two hours a day and have had to postpone many scheduled operations due to lack of fuel.”
Hezbollah rockets
Amid the Gaza war, cross-border firing between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah has escalated almost daily and attacks and rhetoric have escalated in the past month, raising fears of a full-scale war.
While the exchanges have been largely confined to the border areas, Israel has repeatedly carried out attacks in the interior of eastern Lebanon, including an attack on Saturday that killed a Hezbollah operative.
Early on Sunday, air raid sirens sounded again in northern Israel and the military said 20 rockets were fired, some of which were intercepted by air defence systems.
One man was wounded by shrapnel in Kfar Zeitim, near Tiberias, about 30 kilometers (more than 18 miles) inside Israel, and was in stable condition, local police said.
Hezbollah said that “in response to the attack and killing by the Israeli enemy”, it targeted “one of the main targets” in northern Israel, west of Tiberias, with “dozens of Katyusha rockets”.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)