The United States on Thursday praised a “promising start” to Gaza ceasefire talks, as pressure grows for a deal to prevent an expansion of the war that has killed 40,005 people, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
The conflict, sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, has devastated Gaza, at one point displacing almost its entire population, and creating a major humanitarian crisis.
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that talks with CIA Director William Burns began in Doha, the capital of Qatar.
“Today is a promising start,” Kirby told reporters in Washington, adding: “There’s still a lot of work to be done.”
He said the talks are expected to continue on Friday as well.
Hamas official Osama Hamdan said the movement did not attend Thursday’s meeting but was ready to engage in indirect talks if new commitments were made by Israel.
The Palestinian group has demanded the implementation of a ceasefire plan presented by US President Joe Biden in late May.
“If the mediators succeed in agreeing to an end to the Israeli occupation, we will do so, but as of now there is nothing new,” Hamdan told AFP.
He said Hamas would not participate in lengthy talks that “give (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu more time to kill the Palestinian people.”
There has been only one ceasefire so far, in November, when Gaza militants released 105 hostages, including Israelis, captured in an October 7 assault in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
The latest diplomatic effort comes as Gaza’s health ministry said the death toll in the besieged Palestinian territory had risen to more than 40,000 – which UN chief Antonio Guterres said was “one more reason” a ceasefire was needed now.
“This number, if anything, is likely to be lower, given the worrying number of people who remain unaccounted for, who may be trapped in the rubble or who may have died,” his spokesman, Farhan Haq, said.
“This is another reason why we need a ceasefire now, as well as the release of all hostages and uninterrupted humanitarian access.”
The Gaza Health Ministry, which does not give details of civilian and militant casualties, said the toll included 40 deaths in the previous 24 hours.
The Israeli military said it had killed “more than 17,000” Palestinian militants in Gaza since the war began.
– ‘now is the time’ –
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy and his French counterpart Stephane Sezourne will discuss ceasefire talks with Israel’s top diplomat Israel Katz on Friday.
On Wednesday, U.S. Ambassador to Beirut Amos Hochstein said the agreement in Gaza “would also help make a diplomatic solution possible in Lebanon and prevent it from breaking out into a broader war.”
“We have to take advantage of this opportunity for diplomatic action and diplomatic solution. That time has come now,” he said.
The war began with a Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7 and has resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli official figures tallied by AFP.
The militants also took 251 hostages, 111 of whom are still being held in Gaza, 39 of whom the military says are dead.
Mediation efforts have repeatedly stalled since a week-long ceasefire in November.
Hamas officials, some analysts and Israeli critics have said Netanyahu is trying to prolong the war for political gain.
Israeli media this week quoted Defence Minister Yoav Galant as telling a parliamentary committee privately that the hostage release deal was “stalling … in part because of Israel.”
Netanyahu’s office accused Galant of pursuing an “anti-Israel narrative” and said Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was “the only obstacle to the hostage deal.”
– Children covered in blood –
The latest mediation attempt follows the assassination of Sinwar’s predecessor, Hamas political leader and ceasefire negotiator Ismail Haniyeh, on July 31. His killing during a visit to Tehran has raised fears of a wider conflict.
Iran and its regional allies have blamed Israel for the attack and vowed retaliation. Israel has not claimed responsibility.
Western leaders have urged Tehran to refrain from attacking Israel over Haniyeh’s killing, which came hours after a Hezbollah military commander was killed in an Israeli attack in Beirut.
The conflict has resulted in the arrival of pro-Iran groups from Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Syria.
More than 370 Hezbollah members have been killed in 10 months of nearly daily cross-border firefights with Israeli forces, according to AFP, more than the Iran-backed movement lost in its 2006 war with Israel.
According to military figures, 22 soldiers and 26 civilians have been killed on the Israeli side, including those in the Golan Heights.
In Gaza, where the war has destroyed much of the territory’s housing and other infrastructure, there were relatively few deaths on Thursday.
In the deadliest bombing yet, air strikes in Gaza City killed five people, emergency services said.
The Israeli military said troops killed about 20 militants in Rafah, southern Gaza.
The dead and injured, including blood-soaked children, were brought to Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis after the Israeli attack on Wednesday.
“I was not a supporter of Hamas, but now I support them and want to fight them,” one mourner cried.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)