Preparations were underway on Sunday (October 12, 2025) for a ramp-up of aid entering the war-battered Gaza Strip under a new ceasefire deal that many are hoping will signal an end to the devastating 2-year-long war.

The Israeli defence body in charge of humanitarian aid in Gaza, COGAT, said that the amount of aid entering the Gaza Strip is expected to ramp up on Sunday (October 12) to around 600 trucks per day, as stipulated in the agreement.

Egypt said it is sending 400 trucks carrying aid into Gaza on Sunday. The trucks will have to be inspected by Israeli forces before being allowed in.

The Associated Press footage showed dozens of trucks crossing the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing. The Egyptian Red Crescent said the trucks include medical supplies, tents, blankets, food and fuel.

The trucks will head to the inspection area in the Kerem Shalom crossing for screening by Israeli troops. In recent months, the U.N. and its partners have been able to deliver only 20% of the aid needed in Gaza because of the fighting, border closures and Israeli restrictions on what enters.

Expanding Israeli offensives and restrictions on humanitarian aid have triggered a hunger crisis, including famine in parts of the territory.

The United Nations has said that it has about 170,000 metric tons of food, medicine and other humanitarian aid ready to enter Gaza once Israel gives the green light.

The fate of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an Israeli- and U.S.-backed contractor that replaced the U.N. aid operation in Gaza in May as the primary food supplier in Gaza, remains unclear.

Food distribution sites operated by the group in the southernmost city of Rafah and central Gaza were dismantled following the ceasefire deal, several Palestinians said Sunday.

Hoda Goda, who used to go to the GHF sites in Rafah earlier this year, said people had dismantled the structures and taken wood and metal fences GHF workers used to control the crowds.

Another Palestinian, Ehab Abu Majed, said the site in eastern Khan Younis was also dismantled, and there was no food distribution in the past two days. Ahmed al-Masri, a man living in the central Nuseirat refugee camp, said a third site in the Netzarim corridor area was also dismantled.

GHF had been touted by Israel and the United States as an alternative system to prevent Hamas from taking over aid. However, its operations were mired in chaos and hundreds of Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire while heading to its four sites. The Israeli military has said its troops fired warning shots to control crowds.

A GHF representative declined to comment Sunday.

Preparations were also underway Sunday for the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza and Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

A message sent Saturday from Gal Hirsch, Israel’s coordinator for the Hostages and the Missing and obtained by The Associated Press, told hostage families to prepare for the release of their loved ones starting Monday morning. One of the families of the hostages confirmed the note’s authenticity.

Hirsch said preparations in hospitals and in Rei’im camp were complete to receive the live hostages, while the dead will be transferred to the Institute of Forensic Medicine for identification.

An international task force will start working to locate deceased hostages who are not returned within the 72-hour period, said Hirsch. Officials have said the search for the bodies of the dead, some of whom may be buried under rubble, could take time.

Israeli officials believe about 20 of the hostages out of 48 held by Hamas and other Palestinian factions in Gaza are still alive. All of the living hostages are expected to be released Monday.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who pushed to clinch the ceasefire deal, is expected to arrive in Israel Monday morning. He will meet with families of hostages and speak at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, according to a schedule released by the White House.

Trump will then continue on to Egypt, where the office of Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has said he will co-chair a “peace summit” on Monday with attendance by regional and international leaders.

Timing has not yet been announced for the release of some 2,000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel who are to be freed under the deal. They include 250 people serving life sentences in addition to 1,700 people seized from Gaza during the war and held without charge.

Palestinians continued to move back to areas vacated by Israeli forces Sunday, although many were returning to homes reduced to rubble.

Satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press showed a line of vehicles traveling north to Gaza City. The photos taken Saturday showed a line of vehicles on Al Rashid Street, which runs north-south along the Gaza Strip’s coastline on the Mediterranean Sea.

Tents along the coast also could be seen near Gaza City’s marina. Many people have been living along the sea to avoid being targeted in Israeli bombardment of the city.

Armed police were seen in Gaza City and southern Gaza patrolling the streets and securing aid trucks driving through areas from which the Israeli military had withdrawn, according to residents. The police force is part of the Hamas-run Interior Ministry.

The war began when Hamas-led militants launched a surprise attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage.

Published – October 12, 2025 02:24 pm IST

President Donald Trump blocked a $50 million foreign aid programme intended for condoms in Gaza, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Wednesday. During her first official briefing, Leavitt argued that Trump’s decision to pause foreign aid had prevented a “preposterous waste of taxpayer money.” But the claim quickly came under fire, with experts, former officials, and aid organisations doubting its accuracy.

Fact Check:

Leavitt offered no proof to substantiate her claim that $50 million had been earmarked for condoms in Gaza. When asked for evidence, White House officials redirected inquiries to State Department statements, which did not corroborate her claim. These statements, while they mentioned blocking certain aid programmes, did not mention a specific $50 million plan for condoms.

A recent federal report reveals that, under the Biden administration, USAID did not provide any funds for condoms in the Middle East in the fiscal years 2021, 2022, and 2023. The report said that the only contraceptive funding in the region was a small order of injectables and contraceptive pills sent to Jordan, amounting to roughly $46,000.

This also casts doubts on the $50 million figure, especially considering that the global total for male and female condoms provided by USAID in 2023 was about $8.2 million, primarily for African countries.

A former senior Biden official dismissed the claim as a fabrication, calling it “a lie” and accusing the White House of spreading false information.

Despite claims from the White House, experts familiar with US aid in Gaza have found no trace of a planned $50 million expenditure for condoms. Steve Fake of Anera, a nonprofit involved in US-funded health initiatives in Gaza, confirmed that their programmes do not include condom distribution.

This controversy comes amid the White House’s reversal of its decision to freeze federal funding, which had caused confusion, legal challenges, and panic, particularly regarding healthcare programs for low-income Americans. The freeze, which had the potential to halt trillions of dollars in government aid, was initially defended by Karoline Leavitt as part of Trump’s efforts to curb what he called “wasteful” spending.

A satellite image shows a closer view of aid trucks waiting at the Rafah-Egypt border, January 20, 2025.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Gaza has received a major influx of aid and goods, with 915 trucks crossing into the territory on the second day of the ceasefire, the United Nations said.

UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said colleagues in Gaza informed the UN that 915 trucks — significantly higher than the 600 trucks called for in the ceasefire — entered Gaza on Monday, based on information from Israeli authorities and the guarantors of the ceasefire agreement.

Editorial | ​Pyrrhic peace: On the Hamas-Israel ceasefire 

U.N. humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said Sunday the needs in Gaza are staggering and his office said Monday that aid workers are ramping up the delivery of food, clean water, shelter materials and other essential supplies.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that the more than two million people in Gaza, about half of them children, depend on this aid, Haq said.

The World Health Organization, meanwhile, has a 60-day plan to increase beds and deploy overseas health workers to Gaza hospitals, but some 30,000 Palestinians have life-changing injuries and need specialised care, Haq said.

Geneva:

Palestinian health authorities say Israel’s ground and air campaign in Gaza has killed more than 38,000 people, mostly civilians, and driven most of the enclave’s 2.3 million people from their homes.

The war began on Oct. 7 when Hamas operatives rushed across the border into Israeli communities. Israel says the operatives killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and dragged 253 into captivity in Gaza.

This explainer examines how the Palestinian death count is calculated, how reliable it is, the breakdown of civilians and fighters killed and what each side says.

HOW DO GAZA HEALTH AUTHORITIES CALCULATE THE DEATH COUNT?

In the first months of the war, death counts were calculated entirely from counting bodies that arrived in hospitals and data included names and identity numbers for most of those killed.

As the conflict ground on, and fewer hospitals and morgues continued to operate, the authorities adopted other methods too.

From early May, the Health Ministry updated its breakdown of total fatalities to include unidentified bodies which account for nearly a third of the overall deaths. Omar Hussein Ali, head of the ministry’s emergency operations centre in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, said these were bodies that had arrived at hospitals or medical centres without personal data such as identity numbers or full names.

It also began including deaths reported online by family members who had to input information including identity numbers.

IS THE GAZA DEATH COUNT COMPREHENSIVE?

The numbers “do not necessarily reflect all victims due to the fact that many victims are still missing under the rubble”, the Palestinian Health Ministry says. In May it estimated that some 10,000 bodies were uncounted in this way.

The Lancet medical journal published a letter from three academics on July 5 estimating that indirect deaths, caused by factors such as disease, might mean the death count is several times higher than official Palestinian estimates.

The letter said it was “not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza”.

The authors said the figure, which made global headlines, was based on what they said was the conservative estimate of four indirect deaths to one direct death based on trends from prior conflicts.

The U.N. human rights office and the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health have also said during the conflict that the true figures are likely higher than those published, without giving specifics.

HOW CREDIBLE IS THE GAZA DEATH COUNT?

Pre-war Gaza had robust population statistics and better health information systems than in most Middle East countries, public health experts told Reuters.

A spokesperson for the World Health Organisation said the ministry has “good capacity in data collection/analysis and its previous reporting has been considered credible”.

The United Nations regularly cites the ministry’s death count figures, while naming the ministry as the source.

Early in the conflict, after U.S. President Joe Biden cast doubt on casualty figures, the health ministry published a detailed list of the 7,028 deaths that had been registered by that point.

Academics looking at details of listed casualties said in a peer-reviewed article in the Lancet medical journal in November that it was implausible that the patterns shown in the list could be the result of fabrication.

However, there are specific questions over the inclusion of 471 people said to have been killed in an Oct. 17 blast at al-Ahli al-Arab hospital in Gaza City. An unclassified U.S. intelligence report estimated that death count “at the low end of the 100 to 300 spectrum”.

DOES HAMAS CONTROL THE FIGURES?

While Hamas has run Gaza since 2007, the enclave’s Health Ministry also answers to the overall Palestinian Authority ministry in Ramallah in the West Bank.

Gaza’s Hamas-run government has paid the salaries of all those hired in public departments since 2007, including in the Health Ministry. The Palestinian Authority still pays the salaries of those hired before then.

The extent of Hamas control in Gaza now is difficult to assess with Israeli forces occupying most of the territory, including around locations of major hospitals that provide casualty figures, and with fighting ongoing.

WHAT DOES ISRAEL SAY?

Israeli officials have said the figures are suspect because of Hamas’ control over government in Gaza. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oren Mamorstein said the numbers were manipulated and “do not reflect the reality on the ground”.

However, Israel’s military has also accepted in briefings that the overall Gaza casualty numbers are broadly reliable.

In May, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said 14,000 Hamas fighters and 16,000 Palestinian civilians had been killed in the war.

HOW MANY CIVILIANS HAVE BEEN KILLED?

The Health Ministry figures do not differentiate between civilians and Hamas combatants, who do not wear formal uniform or carry separate identification.

Israel periodically provides estimates of how many Hamas fighters it believes have been killed. The most recent was Netanyahu’s estimate of 14,000.

Israeli security officials say such estimates are reached through a combination of counting bodies on the battlefield, intercepts of Hamas communications and intelligence assessments of personnel in targets that were destroyed.

Hamas has said Israeli estimates for its losses are exaggerated but has not said how many of its fighters have been killed.

The Palestinian Health Ministry says more than 70% of the dead are women and children. For most of the conflict its figures showed children as representing slightly over 40% of all those killed.

However, conditions in hospitals compiling figures have worsened amid the fighting and many of those killed may not be identifiable due to their injuries.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Jerusalem:

Days after Israel announced a daily pause in fighting on a key route to allow more aid into Gaza, chaos in the besieged Palestinian territory has left vital supplies piled up and undistributed in the searing summer heat.

More than eight months of war, sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, have led to dire humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip and repeated UN warnings of famine.

Desperation among Gaza’s 2.4 million population has increased as fighting rages, sparking warnings from agencies that they are unable to deliver aid.

Israel says it has let supplies in and called on agencies to step up deliveries.

“The breakdown of public order and safety is increasingly endangering humanitarian workers and operations in Gaza,” the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, said in a briefing late Friday.

“Alongside the fighting, criminal activities and the risk of theft and robbery has effectively prevented humanitarian access to critical locations.”

But Israel says it has allowed hundreds of trucks of aid into southern Gaza, trading blame with the United Nations over why the aid is stacking up.

It shared aerial footage of containers lined up on the Gazan side of the Kerem Shalom crossing and more trucks arriving to add to the stockpile.

The October Hamas attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

The militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza although the army says 41 are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed at least 37,551 people, also mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory.

The blame game

With civil order breaking down in Gaza, the UN says it has been unable to pick up any supplies from Kerem Shalom since Tuesday, leaving crucial aid in limbo.

A deputy UN spokesman this week said the crossing “is operating with limited functionality, including because of fighting in the area”.

William Schomburg, International Committee of the Red Cross chief in Rafah, said arranging lorries from the Egyptian side in particular was complicated.

“It’s not just a question of civil order, but also the fact that you often have to cross battlefields,” he said in an online briefing, adding that the area near Kerem Shalom had been hostile.

“There were even rockets fired nearby. So this whole area is particularly complicated to navigate for reasons linked to the hostilities and for reasons linked to general security.”

Israel’s coordinator for civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, known as COGAT, said Thursday “the content of 1,200 aid trucks awaits collection by UN aid agencies”, saying a lack of distribution was responsible.

Earlier in the week, COGAT spokesman Shimon Freedman told reporters at the crossing the daily pause on a southern road into Gaza was designed to allow the UN “to collect and distribute more aid” alongside an Israeli military presence.

He said most of the aid had not moved because “organisations have not taken sufficient steps to improve their distribution capacity”.

‘Don’t see any aid’

Aid agencies have instead pointed to Israel’s offensive on the southern city of Rafah, which pushed out more than a million people and closed a border crossing with Egypt, as a deepening humanitarian crisis hampered relief efforts.

Schomburg described Rafah City as a “ghost town”.

“It is a ghost town in the sense that you see very few people, high levels of destruction, and really just another symbol of the unfolding tragedy that has become Gaza over the last nine months,” he said.

The UN food agency has said its aid convoys have been looted inside Gaza by “desperate people”.

As both sides stall, it is the civilians in Gaza who are paying the price.

“We don’t see any aid. Everything we get to eat comes from our own money and it’s all very expensive,” said Umm Mohammad Zamlat, 66, from northern Gaza but now living in Khan Yunis in the south.

“Even agencies specialised in aid deliveries are not able to provide anything to us,” she added.

NGO Doctors Without Borders said on Friday that six trucks with 37 tons of supplies, mostly essentially medical items, have been held up at the Egyptian part of Kerem Shalom since June 14.

“This is incomprehensible and unacceptable,” a statement said.

“It’s like asking a fireman to watch a house filled with people burn down, and preventing him putting out the fire.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Palestinian Territories:

Hamas on Thursday called for an end to airdrops of aid after two Palestinians were killed in northern Gaza when a aid pallet crashed into a warehouse after its parachute failed to open.

Several countries, including the United States, Britain and France, have resorted to regular aid airdrops in northern Gaza, where humanitarian agencies have warned of a looming famine.

On Tuesday, two people died when an aid parachute fell on the roof of a warehouse where residents had gathered to collect relief supplies.

The latest fatalities take to at least 21 the number of people killed when airdrops of aid have gone disastrously wrong, according to the Hamas authorities.

“We reiterate that airdrops pose a real danger to the lives of citizens and do not provide a real solution to alleviate the food crisis plaguing northern Gaza,” Salama Marouf, head of the government’s media office in Gaza, said in a statement.

“We call for an immediate halt to the delivery of aid in this ineffective and erroneous manner, and we call for the full activation of the land crossings to deliver humanitarian aid to northern Gaza.”

With only a trickle of aid reaching the starving north and the United Nations warning of “imminent famine”, foreign governments have turned to airdrops to get aid into the territory.

Aid agencies say the situation has deteriorated this week after Israeli forces closed the Rafah border crossing with Egypt after taking control of it.

Relief also has not been transferred into Gaza through the other main crossing between Israel and the Palestinian territory, Kerem Shalom, after it came under rocket fire three times since Sunday.

Meanwhile, a US container ship loaded with aid for Gaza left Cyprus Thursday in a new test of a maritime corridor to get relief into the besieged territory.

The US-flagged MV Sagamore left the port of Larnaca after being loaded with aid from Britain, Cyprus and the United States, Cyprus government spokesperson Yiannis Antoniou told the official CNA news agency.

US military engineers have been assembling a temporary pier for installation on the Gaza coast to unload maritime aid deliveries.

UN agencies and humanitarian aid groups have warned that maritime deliveries and airdrops cannot deliver aid in the quantities needed to avert acute food shortages for the 2.4 million people across Gaza.

Gaza has been devastated by the war which started with Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of about 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 34,904 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Washington:

The chief of the United Nations’ food program has warned of a “full-blown famine” in northern Gaza and reiterated calls for a ceasefire in Israel’s war against Hamas.

“There is famine, full-blown famine in the north and it’s moving its way south,” Cindy McCain, executive director of the World Food Program, said in an interview excerpt published Friday.

“What we are asking for and what we’ve continually asked for is a ceasefire and the ability to have unfettered access to get in safe… into Gaza — various ports, various gate crossings,” McCain continued.

The World Food Program is one of the many humanitarian groups trying to get aid into Gaza.

The World Health Organization said Friday that the availability of food in the Gaza Strip has very slightly improved, though the risk of famine continues in the besieged Palestinian territory, which is home to 2.4 million people.

Israel has repeatedly accused the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations of not distributing aid quickly enough.

The aid agencies blame the trickle of essential food into the Palestinian enclave on restrictions and inspections imposed by Israel.

The war in Gaza broke out after Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

The militants also took around 250 hostages, of whom Israel estimates 128 remain in Gaza, including 35 believed to be dead.

Israel’s devastating retaliatory campaign has killed at least 34,622 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Jerusalem:

The amount of humanitarian aid going into the Gaza Strip will be ramped up in the coming days, Israel’s military said on Sunday, citing new corridors that use an Israeli seaport and border crossings into the Palestinian enclave.

After closing off access to Gaza following the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 that set off the war, Israel has since allowed in aid convoys amid growing international pressure to boost the amount of supplies to feed Gaza’s 2.3 million people.

A spiraling humanitarian crisis has prompted calls from Israel’s Western and Arab partners to do more to facilitate the entry of aid to the enclave, where most are homeless, many face famine, and where civilian infrastructure is devastated and disease widespread.

The United States said earlier this month it welcomed Israel’s latest efforts to allow in more humanitarian aid, but success would be measured in results in improving the situation on the ground.

“Over the last few weeks, the amount of humanitarian aid going into Gaza has significantly increased. In the coming days, the amount of aid going into Gaza will continue to scale up even more,” spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said in a statement.

“Food, water, medical supplies, shelter equipment and other aid – more of it is going into Gaza than ever before,” Hagari said.

Separately, U.S.-based charity World Central Kitchen said it would resume operations in the Gaza Strip on Monday, a month after seven of its workers were killed in an Israeli air strike.

Hagari said the aid increase is a result of using Israel’s Ashdod port, as well as a new crossing into northern Gaza and increased aid from Jordan entering through the Kerem Shalom border crossing at the southern tip of Gaza.

Israel is also working with U.S. Central Command to construct a “temporary maritime pier,” which will allow ship-to-shore distribution, Hagari said.

“Getting aid to the people of Gaza is a top priority -because our war is against Hamas, not against the people of Gaza,” he added.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Cairo:

United Nations chief Antonio Guterres said Sunday in Cairo that delivering the necessary aid to famine-threatened Gaza “requires Israel removing the remaining obstacles and chokepoints to relief”.

Guterres repeated his call for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” to alleviate “the plight of Palestinian children, women and men struggling to survive the nightmare in Gaza”, during a joint press conference with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry.

He had visited on Saturday the Rafah border crossing with Gaza, where nearly six months of war and siege have displaced the vast majority of the territory’s 2.4 million people and destroyed its civilian infrastructure.

“Looking at Gaza, it almost appears that the four horsemen of war, famine, conquest and death are galloping across it,” the UN chief said.

“The whole world recognises that it’s past time to silence the guns and ensure an immediate humanitarian ceasefire,” he continued.

The Israeli government is under growing international pressure to ease its bombardment and ground offensive in Gaza, which the territory’s health ministry says have killed at least 32,226 people, most of them women and children.

The war was sparked on October 7 by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel, which resulted in about 1,160 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.

Israel has vowed to pursue its retaliatory military campaign all the way to Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, where 1.5 million Palestinians have sought shelter, penned in by the Egyptian border.

Guterres, who also met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, called the Rafah border crossing and Egypt’s El-Arish airport where assistance is sent “essential arteries for life-saving aid into Gaza”.

“But those arteries are clogged,” he said, with massive lines of trucks piled up on the Egyptian side, only trickling in as the humanitarian situation worsens.

Calls have mounted for Israel to ease its restrictions on aid and open more crossings into Gaza.

“Palestinians in Gaza desperately need what has been promised — a flood of aid. Not trickles. Not drops,” Guterres said.

The UN has repeatedly warned of famine in the Palestinian territory, particularly in the north, which has been largely cut off from aid deliveries.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Trucks of flour have reached northern Gaza for distribution to areas that have had no aid in four months, Palestinian media reported on Sunday, with famine looming in the enclave and truce talks between Israel and Hamas due to resume in Qatar.

A convoy of 12 trucks arrived in the north on Saturday – six in Gaza City and six in the Jabalia refugee camp – carrying supplies to also be distributed to the northernmost areas of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, the media and residents said.

The Hamas-linked Home Front media outlet reported that the aid was distributed by the “Popular Committees”, a group that includes leaders of powerful clans in Gaza. A Hamas source said the route was secured by Hamas security personnel.

Aid agencies have warned that pockets of Gaza already face famine, with hospitals in the north reporting children dying of malnutrition and dehydration.

The hunger crisis has piled international pressure on Israel more than five months into its ground and air campaign in Gaza, triggered by the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, with more talks for a ceasefire and hostage exchange expected in the coming days.

Hamas killed around 1,200 people in its attack and seized 253 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has now killed more than 31,500 Palestinians according to health authorities in Hamas-run Gaza.

An Israeli strike overnight killed 12 people in one house in Deir al-Balah in the centre of the tiny, crowded Gaza Strip, the health ministry said, among 92 people it said had been killed in the previous 24 hours.

Israel’s stated war aim is to wipe out Hamas, and it has said this can only be achieved with an assault on Rafah on the border with Egypt, the last relatively safe place for civilians who have flocked to camps there from other parts of Gaza.

Israel’s Western allies have warned it against attacking Rafah, however, unless it is able to protect civilians. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Friday he had approved plans for an assault.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Sunday after talks with Jordanian King Abdullah in Jordan that the large number of civilian casualties that would result from such an assault would make regional peace “very difficult”.

QATAR TALKS

A source familiar with the truce talks in Qatar told Reuters the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency would join the delegation attending the negotiations with Qatari, Egyptian and U.S. mediators and was expected in Doha on Sunday.

Hamas presented a new ceasefire proposal last week including an exchange of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners. Israel’s security cabinet is to meet to discuss it before the delegation leaves.

Netanyahu has already said the proposal was based on “unrealistic demands”, but a Palestinian official familiar with mediation efforts said chances for a deal looked better with Hamas having given more details on the proposed prisoner swap.

“The mediators felt positive about Hamas’ new proposal. Some in Israel felt the group made some improvement on its previous position and it is now in the hands of Netanyahu alone to say whether an agreement is imminent,” said the official, who asked not to be named.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)