Gaza:

Israeli air strikes targeted Gaza on Wednesday ahead of ceasefire talks that the United States hopes will stop Iran striking Israel in retaliation for the killing of a Hamas leader.

Iran and its allies blamed Israel for the July 31 killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran during a visit for the inauguration of President Masoud Pezeshkian. Israel has not commented.

The West has urged Iran to stand down its threat to avenge his death, which came hours after an Israeli strike in Beirut killed a senior commander of Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-backed rebel group in Lebanon.

The escalation has raised fears of a wider conflict after more than 10 months of war in Gaza, which has claimed nearly 40,000 lives, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory.

So far, there has been only one, week-long truce in the Gaza fighting, in November, when dozens of hostages in Gaza were released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

Ahead of Thursday’s ceasefire talks, a Hamas official said the Islamist movement was “continuing its consultations with the mediators”.

“Hamas really wants an end to the war and a ceasefire agreement on the basis of the (Biden) plan,” another Hamas official said, referring to a proposal US President Joe Biden laid out on May 31.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday detailed its conditions for a truce, including “a veto on certain prisoners” being released from its jails.

Biden said on Tuesday that a Gaza ceasefire deal could deter Iran from attacking Israel.

Asked if a truce between Israel and Hamas could stave off an Iranian assault, Biden said: “That’s my expectation”. He added that while negotiations were “getting hard”, he was “not giving up”.

His envoy for the conflict, Amos Hochstein, was in Beirut on Wednesday where he warned the clock was ticking for a Gaza ceasefire.

“There is no more time to waste and there’s no more valid excuses from any party for any further delay,” he said after talks with Lebanon’s parliament speaker Nabih Berri.

Iran has rejected Western calls for restraint, with foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani saying the demand “brazenly asks Iran to take no deterrent action against a regime which has violated its sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

Israel on ‘high alert’

Israeli President Isacc Herzog said on social media platform X that the country remained on “high alert”.

“I want to express my appreciation and thanks to our allies standing united with us in the face of the hate-filled threats of the Iranian regime and its terrorist proxies,” he said.

The escalation has prompted Western governments to issue advisories against travel to Lebanon as well as prepare contingency plans to evacuate their nationals from the region if full-scale war breaks out.

A ferry seen off Limassol, Cyprus was on standby to provide assistance “in the event of an evacuation of the conflict zone”, a spokesperson for its charterer said.

Fearing an attack by Iran and Hezbollah, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art said it had stashed away its most valuable pieces, including paintings by Pablo Picasso and Gustav Klimt.

“In the last three, four, five days, when this new threat from Hezbollah and from Iran came on the table again, we understood that we needed to take other precautions,” said museum director Tania Coen-Uzzielli.

The Biden administration approved more than $20 billion in new weapons sales to Israel on Tuesday, including 50 F-15 fighter jets.

The United States has deployed an aircraft carrier strike group and a guided missile submarine to the region in support of Israel.

Gaza death count nears 40,000

The Gaza war began with Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel which resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Hamas also seized 251 people, 111 of whom are still held captive in Gaza, including 39 the military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive in Gaza has killed at least 39,965 people, according to the latest count from the territory’s health ministry, which does not provide a breakdown of civilian and Hamas deaths.

In the latest violence, the Israeli military said it carried out dozens of air strikes across the Gaza Strip.

It said its troops were “continuing precise, intelligence-based operational activity in the area of Tel al-Sultan” in the southern city of Rafah.

In the past 24 hours, the army said it had “struck over 40” sites across Gaza, including structures from which Hamas fired anti-tank missiles.

The Gaza civil defence agency said its emergency teams pulled the bodies of four people from the same family from the rubble of a bombed apartment in the Qatari-built residential complex of Hamad, near Khan Yunis.

Residents of central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp said it was struck by a missile after midnight.

“We were sleeping… and were surprised by a missile targeting the neighbours, children, their father and mother,” Jihad al-Sharif told AFPTV.

“The explosion was terrible,” he said, adding his family emerged to find the remains of children in the middle of the street.

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

Gaza:

At least 42 people were killed in Israeli attacks on districts of Gaza City in the north of the Palestinian enclave on Saturday, the director of the Hamas-run government media office said.

One Israeli strike on houses in Al-Shati, one of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps, killed 24 people, Ismail Al-Thawabta told Reuters. Another 18 Palestinians were killed in a strike on houses in the Al-Tuffah neighborhood.

The Israeli military released a brief statement saying: “A short while ago, IDF fighter jets struck two Hamas military infrastructure sites in the area of Gaza City.”

It said more details would be released soon.

Hamas did not comment on the Israeli claim to have hit its military infrastructure. It said in a statement the attacks targeted the civilian population and vowed in a statement “the occupation and its Nazi leaders will pay the price for their violations against our people.”

Footage obtained by Reuters showed dozens of Palestinians rushing out to search for victims amid the destroyed houses. The footage showed wrecked homes, blasted walls, and debris and dust filling the street in Shati refugee camp.

Israel’s ground and air campaign in Gaza was triggered when Hamas stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people and seizing more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

The offensive has left Gaza in ruins, killed more than 37,400 people, of whom 101 were killed in the past 24 hours, according to Palestinian health authorities, and left nearly the entire population homeless and destitute.

More than eight months into the war, Israel’s advance is now focused on the two last areas its forces had yet to seize: Rafah on Gaza’s southern edge and the area surrounding Deir al-Balah in the centre.

Residents said Israeli tanks deepened their incursion into western and northern Rafah areas in recent days. On Saturday Israeli forces bombed several areas from air and the ground, forcing many families living in areas described as humanitarian-designated zones to leave northwards.

The Israeli military said forces continued “precise, intelligence-based” targeted operations in Rafah, killing many Palestinian gunmen and dismantling military infrastructure.

On Friday, the Gaza health ministry said at least 25 Palestinians were killed in Mawasi in western Rafah and 50 wounded. Palestinians said a tank shell hit a tent housing displaced families.

The Israeli military said that the incident was under review. “An initial inquiry conducted suggests that there is no indication that a strike was carried out by the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) in the Humanitarian Area in Al-Mawasi,” it said.

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

New Delhi:
Thousands of Palestinians sought refuge on Saturday after Israel warned them to evacuate the northern Gaza Strip before an expected ground offensive against Hamas, one week on from the deadliest terror attack in Israeli history.

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