DUBAI: Mediation efforts on ending the war in the Gaza Strip are ongoing, Qatar's foreign ministry spokesman said on Tuesday in a press briefing.
Separately, he added that escalation in the Red Sea represented a "big danger", speaking a day after US and British forces carried out fresh strikes against Yemen's fighters who have disrupted global shipping in protest over Israel's bombardment of Gaza.
Qatari and Egyptian mediators would work on a pause in fighting of up to two months as part of a deal to free all the captives being held in Gaza, the US news site Axios reported.
The report said the deal would take place in multiple stages, the first of which would see the release of women, men over 60 and those in critical medical condition.
Subsequent phases would involve the release of women soldiers, younger civilian men, male soldiers and the bodies of dead captives.
The officials said the deal would also see the release of an as yet undetermined number of Palestinian prisoners being held in Israel, but not all of them.
The proposal does not include promises to end the war, but it would involve Israeli troops reducing their presence in major cities in Gaza and gradually allowing residents to return to the territory's devastated north.
The officials said the deal was expected to take around two months to implement.
Qatar, which with the US and Egypt has led negotiations for the release of captives and pauses to the fighting in Gaza, pushed back against the reports on Tuesday.
Declining to comment on specifics of negotiations, which he said continued with "full force", foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al Ansari said the leaks to the media were "either missing elements or completely false".
"The only way out of the conflict is for negotiations to take place and for there to be a sustainable ceasefire between both sides," he told a Doha news conference.
Reports of the proposal come as US media said the White House's coordinator for the Middle East, Brett McGurk, was due in the region for meetings in Egypt and Qatar aimed at securing a new captives exchange deal.
About 250 captives were taken during October 7 attacks, and Israel says around 132 remain in Gaza.
That includes the bodies of at least 28 dead captives, according to a count based on Israeli data.
Israel launched a relentless offensive that has killed at least 25,490 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to Gaza's health ministry. — Agencies
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