CAIRO: Israeli military strikes killed at least 45 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Sunday, most of them in the north of the enclave, Palestinian health officials said, as efforts to secure a ceasefire in the more than year-long war resumed in Qatar.
The directors of the CIA and Israel's Mossad intelligence agency will meet with Qatar's prime minister on Sunday in Doha, an official briefed on the talks said. The negotiations will seek a short-term ceasefire and the release of some captives in exchange for Israel's release of Palestinian prisoners, the official said. The talks aim to get Israel and Hamas to agree to a halt in fighting for less than a month in the hope it would lead to a more permanent ceasefire. A Palestinian official close to the mediation effort said: "I expect Hamas would listen to the new offers, but it remains determined that any agreement must end the war and get Israeli forces out of Gaza."
The death toll from Israel's retaliatory campaign in Gaza is approaching 43,000, Gaza health officials say, with the densely populated enclave in ruins. At least 43 of those killed on Sunday were in northern Gaza, where Israeli troops have returned to root out Hamas fighters who it says have regrouped there. Twenty people were killed following an airstrike on houses in Jabalia, the largest of the Gaza Strip's eight historic refugee camps, which has been the focus of an Israeli military offensive for more than three weeks, medics and the Palestinian official news agency WAFA said.
An Israeli airstrike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinian families in Shati camp in Gaza City, killed nine people and wounded 20 others, with many in critical condition, medics said. Footage circulated on Palestinian media showed people rushing to the bomb site to help evacuate the casualties. Bodies were scattered on the ground, while some carried wounded children in their arms before loading them in a vehicle.
Three local journalists were among those killed at the school in Shati — Saed Radwan, head of digital media at Hamas Al-Aqsa television, Hanin Baroud, and Hamza Abu Selmeya. The Gaza government media office described their deaths as an "assassination." This raised the number of Palestinian journalists killed by Israeli fire since October 7, 2023 to 180, it added. On Sunday, Israel's military said it had killed more than 40 gunmen in the Jabalia area in the past 24 hours. — Reuters
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