Israeli air strikes on Gaza killed 27 people on Wednesday (November 19, 2025), officials in the Strip said, with Israel and Hamas each accusing the other of violating the fragile ceasefire in the Palestinian territory.

The strikes were among the deadliest in Gaza since the truce entered into force last month, and came as Israel also announced a string of attacks targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon in spite of a nearly year-long ceasefire there.

Fourteen people were killed on Wednesday in Gaza City in the north and 13 in the Khan Yunis area in the south, according to the territory’s civil defence agency, which operates under Hamas authority. Two hospitals contacted by AFP gave the same toll.

The Israeli military said it was striking Hamas after militants opened fire towards an area where troops were operating in the south in “violation of the ceasefire agreement”.

Hamas denied the accusation and denounced the attacks as a “dangerous escalation” that could jeopardise the truce, which has largely held since October 10 despite flare-ups.

Ahraf Abu Sultan, 50, told AFP he had returned to his home in Gaza City with his family on Sunday, after being displaced in the south for a year.

“We barely managed to repair one room in our destroyed house to try and settle down just two days ago, and the bombing and death has started again. They don’t even give us a chance to breathe,” he said.

Fellow Gaza City resident Nivine Ahmed said she had been chatting with a neighbour when Israel’s bombings “turned everything upside down in a second”.

“We heard the sound of explosions and saw the smoke rising. People were running and the ambulance sirens were wailing, carrying away the martyrs,” she said.

“Next time the missile could fall on us.”

Trump peace plan

Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by both sides.

The highest daily toll registered since the truce took effect was on October 29, when more than 100 people were killed in Israeli strikes, according to civil defence figures and data received by AFP from five Gaza hospitals.

Israel has carried out repeated strikes against what it says are Hamas targets during the ceasefire, resulting in the death of more than 280 Palestinians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

The truce is based on a U.S.-brokered deal that also included the return to Israel of the last 48 hostages held by militants.

While all the living hostages were handed over early in the ceasefire, the process of returning the dead has been slower, and the bodies of three hostages still remain in Gaza.

The implementation of the second stage of U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan has yet to be agreed, particularly as it concerns disarming Hamas, establishing a transitional authority and deploying an international stabilisation force.

The UN Security Council voted on Monday in favour of a U.S.-drafted resolution endorsing Mr. Trump’s plan, though Hamas rejected the resolution as failing to meet Palestinians’ “political and humanitarian demands”.

The war was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people.

Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza has killed at least 69,513 people, according to figures from the health ministry that the UN considers reliable.

Lebanon strikes, Syria visit

Israel also conducted several strikes in southern Lebanon on Wednesday.

The military said it targeted Hezbollah weapons storage facilities in several towns, and accused the Iran-backed group of trying to rebuild its capabilities.

The Israeli military has kept up frequent air strikes in Lebanon in spite of a ceasefire sealed last November that sought to end more than a year of hostilities with Hezbollah.

The raids came a day after 13 people were killed in a strike that Israel said targeted Hamas members in a Palestinian refugee camp in the south of the country — the deadliest attack in Lebanon since the truce came into effect.

Also on Wednesday, Israel’s top leaders visited Israeli troops stationed inside Syrian territory in a buffer zone intended to separate the two countries’ forces.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told troops that their presence was of “immense importance” to Israel’s security.

The visit was sharply condemned by Damascus, which called it “a serious violation of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

Published – November 20, 2025 07:25 am IST

A senior Israeli official on Tuesday (August 19, 2025) said the government stood firm on its call for the release of all hostages in any future Gaza deal, after Hamas accepted a new truce proposal.

Mediators are awaiting an official Israeli response to the plan, a day after Hamas signalled its readiness for a fresh round of talks aimed at ending nearly two years of war.

Mediator Qatar expressed guarded optimism for the new proposal, noting that it was “almost identical” to an earlier version agreed to by Israel.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a senior Israeli official told AFP the government’s stance had not changed and demanded the release of all hostages in any deal.

The two foes have held on-and-off indirect negotiations throughout the war, resulting in two short truces during which Israeli hostages were released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, but they have ultimately failed to broker a lasting ceasefire.

Qatar and Egypt, backed by the United States, have mediated the frequent rounds of shuttle diplomacy.

Egypt said Monday that it and Qatar had sent the new proposal to Israel, adding “the ball is now in its court”.

Qatari foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari said on Tuesday that Hamas had given a “very positive response, and it truly was almost identical to what the Israeli side had previously agreed to”.

“We cannot make any claims that a breakthrough has been made. But we do believe it is a positive point,” he added.

– Mounting pressure –

According to a report in Egyptian state-linked outlet Al-Qahera News, the latest deal proposes an initial 60-day truce, a partial hostage release, the freeing of some Palestinian prisoners and provisions allowing for the entry of aid.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has yet to publicly comment on the plan, but said last week that his country would accept “an agreement in which all the hostages are released at once and according to our conditions for ending the war”.

Senior Hamas official Mahmoud Mardawi said on social media that his group had “opened the door wide to the possibility of reaching an agreement, but the question remains whether Netanyahu will once again close it, as he has done in the past”.

Hamas’s acceptance of the proposal comes as Netanyahu faces increasing pressure at home and abroad to end the war.

On Sunday, tens of thousands took to the streets in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv to call for the end of the war and a deal to free the remaining hostages still being held captive.

Of the 251 hostages taken during Hamas’s October 2023 attack that triggered the war, 49 are still in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.

The new proposal also comes after Israel’s security cabinet approved plans to conquer Gaza City, fanning fears the new offensive will worsen the already catastrophic humanitarian crisis in the devastated territory.

Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir — who has staunchly opposed ending the war — slammed the plan, warning of a “tragedy” if Netanyahu “gives in to Hamas”.

– ‘Unbearable’ –

Gaza’s civil defence agency reported that 31 people were killed Tuesday by Israeli strikes and fire across the territory.

Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP the situation was “very dangerous and unbearable” in the Zeitoun and Sabra neighbourhoods of Gaza City, where he said “artillery shelling continues intermittently”.

The Israeli military declined to comment on specific troop movements, saying only that it was “operating to dismantle Hamas military capabilities” and took “feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm”.

Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties accessing swaths of the Palestinian territory mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by the civil defence agency or the Israeli military.

Sabra resident Hussein al-Dairi, 44, said “tanks are firing shells and mortars, and drones are firing bullets and missiles” in the neighbourhood.

“We heard on the news that Hamas had agreed to a truce, but the occupation is escalating the war against us, the civilians,” he added.

Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

Israel’s offensive has killed at least 62,064 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, which the United Nations considers reliable.

Published – August 19, 2025 10:27 pm IST

A drone view of people gathering during the arrival of the freed Palestinian prisoners, after they were released from an Israeli jail as part of a hostages-prisoners swap and a ceasefire deal in Gaza between Hamas and Israel, in Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, January 30, 2025.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Hamas and Israel will carry out their fourth hostage-prisoner swap of the Gaza ceasefire on Saturday (February 1, 2025), with the militant group to free three Israeli captives in exchange for 90 inmates in Israeli jails.

Militants in Gaza began releasing hostages after the first 42-day phase of the ceasefire with Israel took effect on January 19. The hostages have been in captivity for nearly 15 months.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants have so far handed over 15 hostages to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

Israeli campaign group, the Hostage and Missing Families Forum, named the captives to be released on Saturday as Yarden Bibas, Keith Seigel, who also has U.S. citizenship, and Ofer Kalderon, who also holds French nationality.

The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed it had received the names of the three captives to be released.

In exchange, Israel will free 90 prisoners, nine of whom are serving life sentences, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group said.

During their October 7, 2023 attack on Israel which started the Gaza war, militants abducted Siegel from kibbutz Kfar Aza, and Kalderon and Bibas from kibbutz Nir Oz.

Militants took a total of 251 people hostage that day. Of those, 79 still remain in Gaza, including at least 34 the military says are dead.

Those seized include the wife and two children of Bibas, whom Hamas has already declared dead, although Israeli officials have yet to confirm that.

The two Bibas boys — Kfir, the youngest hostage, who turned two in captivity earlier this month, and his four-year-old brother Ariel — have become symbols of the suffering of the hostages held in Gaza.

The children were taken along with their mother, Shiri.

Hamas says the boys and their mother were killed in an Israeli air strike in November 2023.

Chaotic scenes

The arrangements for hostage handovers in Gaza have sometimes been chaotic, particularly for the most recent handover in the southern city of Khan Younis, which produced scenes that the Israeli prime minister condemned as “shocking”.

Woman hostage Arbel Yehud was visibly distressed as masked gunman struggled to clear a path for her through crowds of spectators desperate to witness her handover, television images showed.

Israel briefly delayed Thursday’s prisoner release in protest and the ICRC urged all parties to improve security.

“The security of these operations must be assured, and we urge for improvements in the future,” ICRC president Mirjana Spoljaric said.

Later on Thursday, Israeli authorities released 110 imates from Ofer prison, including high-profile former militant commander Zakaria Zubeidi, 49, who was given a hero’s welcome in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

‘Where’s Dad?’

Also freed was Hussein Nasser, who received little attention from the crowd but was at the centre of his daughters’ world.

“Where’s Dad?” Raghda Nasser asked tearfully as she moved through the crowd, an AFP correspondent reported.

Raghda, 21, hugged her father in the flesh for the first time Thursday night. Her mother was pregnant with her when he was jailed 22 years ago.

“I just visited him behind the glass in Israeli prisons. I cannot express my feelings,” Raghda said.

The fragile ceasefire hinges on the release of a total of 33 hostages in exchange for around 1,900 people – mostly Palestinians – in Israeli jails.

The truce deal has allowed a surge of aid into Gaza, where the war has created a long-running humanitarian crisis.

Negotiations for a second phase of the deal are set to start on Monday, according to a timeline provided by an Israeli official. This phase would cover the release of the remaining captives.

During the current phase, more than 462,000 war-displaced Palestinians have returned to the north of Gaza since Israel restored access on Monday, according to UN figures. Many have gone back to homes that have been completely destroyed.

The Israel-Hamas ceasefire entered a third day on Tuesday (January 21, 2025), while U.S. President Donald Trump said he doubted the fragile deal would hold.

Desperately needed humanitarian aid has begun to flow into war-battered Gaza after Israel and Hamas conducted the first exchange of hostages for prisoners agreed under the terms of the ceasefire.

Gazans displaced by more than 15 months of war have been walking through an apocalyptic landscape to return to whatever remains of their homes, while rescuers trawl the rubble for bodies.

“Gaza is like a massive demolition site,” Mr. Trump said as he signed a flurry of executive orders following his inauguration.

Asked whether he believed the two sides would maintain the truce, Mr. Trump said: “That’s not our war; it’s their war. But I’m not confident.”

Mr. Trump had claimed credit for the three-phase ceasefire agreement announced ahead of his return to the White House by Qatar and the U.S., following months of fruitless negotiations under his predecessor Joe Biden.

Mr. Trump has made clear he would support Israel, and in one of his first acts as President, he revoked sanctions on Israeli settlers in the West Bank imposed by the Biden administration over attacks against Palestinians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas both congratulated Trump on his return.

“I look forward to working with you to return the remaining hostages, to destroy Hamas’s military capabilities and end its political rule in Gaza, and to ensure that Gaza never again poses a threat to Israel,” Mr. Netanyahu said.

‘We will rebuild’

Displaced Gazan Ghadeer Abdul Rabbo, 30, said she hopes that “with or without Trump”, the ceasefire will hold, and world governments will help “maintain this calm, because we are afraid”.

If all goes to plan, during the initial, 42-day phase of the truce that began Sunday (January 19, 2025), a total of 33 hostages are to be returned from Gaza in exchange for around 1,900 Palestinians.

Over those six weeks, the parties are meant to negotiate a permanent ceasefire.

In Rafah, in southern Gaza, Ismail Madi said that “we have endured immense hardships, but we will stay here. We will rebuild this place.”

Three Israeli hostages, all women, were reunited with their families on Sunday (January 19, 2025) after more than 15 months in captivity.

Hours later, 90 Palestinian prisoners were released from an Israeli jail.

In Israel, there was elation as Emily Damari, Romi Gonen and Doron Steinbrecher returned home and appeared to be in good health.

“In Emily’s own words, she is the happiest girl in the world; she has her life back,” Ms. Damari’s mother Mandy said on Monday (January 20, 2025), adding that her daughter was “doing much better than any of us could have expected” even after losing two fingers.

The first group of Palestinians released under the deal left Ofer prison in the West Bank early Monday (January 20, 2025), with jubilant crowds celebrating their arrival in the nearby town of Beitunia.

One freed detainee, Abdul Aziz Muhammad Atawneh, described prison as “hell, hell, hell”.

Another, Khalida Jarrar of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – proscribed as a “terrorist” group by Israel and some Western governments – said prison conditions were harsh and that she had been kept “in solitary confinement for six months”.

“The next hostage-prisoner swap should take place on Saturday (January 25, 2025),” a senior Hamas official told AFP.

The relatives of the three Israeli ex-hostages called for the release of the remaining 91 captives seized during Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack that sparked the war, including 34 the military says are dead.

Meirav Leshem Gonen, mother of Romi Gonen, said, “We got our Romi back, but all families deserve the same outcome, both the living and the dead.”

There was anxiety in Israel over the next phases of the truce, with columnist Sima Kadmon warning in the Yedioth Ahronoth daily that the coming hostage releases may be more painful than the first.

“Some of them will arrive on gurneys and wheelchairs. Others will arrive in coffins. Some will arrive wounded and injured, in dire emotional condition,” she wrote.

‘Beautiful feeling’

In southern Gaza, Ammar Barbakh, 35, spent the truce’s first night in a tent on the rubble of his home.

“This is the first time I sleep comfortably and I’m not afraid,” he said.

“It’s a beautiful feeling, and I hope the ceasefire continues.”

The war has devastated much of the Gaza Strip and displaced the vast majority of its population of 2.4 million.

“More than 900 trucks carrying humanitarian aid entered Gaza on Monday (January 20, 2025),” the United Nations said.

The day the deal came into force, 630 trucks entered Gaza.

Qatar, which played a key role in negotiating the truce, said that 12.5 million litres of fuel would enter Gaza over the first 10 days.

Hamas’s October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Sunday (January 19, 2025) that the death toll in the war had reached 46,913, a majority civilians, figures the United Nations has said are reliable.

Joe Biden and Donald Trump are both claiming credit for Israel and Hamas agreeing to a ceasefire deal in Gaza. File
| Photo Credit: AFP

U.S. President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump are both claiming credit for Israel and Hamas agreeing to a ceasefire deal in Gaza after the White House brought Trump’s Middle East envoy into negotiations that have dragged on for months.

Mr. Trump wasted no time in asserting he was the moving force behind the deal, whose final details were still being ironed out, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.

LIVE: Qatar PM confirms Israel, Hamas reach Gaza ceasefire, hostage deal

“This EPIC ceasefire agreement could have only happened as a result of our Historic Victory in November, as it signaled to the entire World that my Administration would seek Peace and negotiate deals to ensure the safety of all Americans, and our Allies,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media. “I am thrilled American and Israeli hostages will be returning home to be reunited with their families and loved ones.”

Mr. Trump added that his incoming Mideast envoy, Steve Witkoff, would continue “to work closely with Israel and our Allies to make sure Gaza NEVER again becomes a terrorist safe haven.”

Bidenstressed in a statement that a deal was reached under “the precise contours” of a plan that he set out in late in May.

“It is the result not only of the extreme pressure that Hamas has been under and the changed regional equation after a ceasefire in Lebanon and weakening of Iran — but also of dogged and painstaking American diplomacy,” Biden said. “My diplomacy never ceased in their efforts to get this done.”

Nancy Okail, head of the U.S.-based Center for International Policy, said acceptance of the deal in the face of Trump’s insistence that a ceasefire be in place when he takes office next week “ironically shows how effective actual pressure can be in changing Israeli government behavior.”

Jonathan Panikoff, director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council, said Mr. Biden deserves praise for continuing to push the talks despite repeated failures. But Mr. Trump’s threats to Hamas and his efforts through Witkoff to “cajole” Netanyahu deserve credit as well, he said.

“The ironic reality is that at a time of heightened partisanship even over foreign policy, the deal represents how much more powerful and influential U.S. foreign policy can be when it’s bipartisan,” he said. “Both the outgoing and incoming administration deserve credit for for this deal and it would’ve been far less likely to happen without both pushing for it.”

The Biden administration’s open embrace of incoming Mr. Trump team involvement in the talks was rooted in far more than the president-elect’s influence with Netanyahu and his threats that there would be “hell to pay” if a deal wasn’t done by Inauguration Day, which is in five days, three current U.S. officials said.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to offer candid details, said their interest in having Witkoff participate in the talks alongside Biden’s Mideast pointman, Brett McGurk, was primarily designed to ensure that an agreement — which will require a lengthy American commitment — would have continued U.S. support after Biden leaves office.

Yet, since Witkoff entered the latest round of talks in Doha, Qatar, alongside McGurk, these U.S. officials have downplayed Trump’s relevance to the process apart from the importance of ensuring his support for a deal painstakingly negotiated over the past year. They also want backing for a plan pushed by the Biden administration for the governance, reconstruction and security of Gaza that will take many months — and significant U.S. backing — to succeed.

The officials said it was important for all parties to the deal to know that the agreement had buy-in from the new president. That was important not only because Biden will leave office in just five days, but also because the U.S. is a guarantor of the agreement that will play out in several phases.

One fear about not including Trump officials in the negotiations was that the post-conflict plan for Gaza that has been worked over the past year might be abandoned by the new administration.

That plan, outlined most recently on Tuesday by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, calls for an international presence in Gaza to work with and assist the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority with both governance and reconstruction. It also calls for a temporary foreign security presence in the territory to address Israeli security concerns.

Over the course of the war, Biden’s relationship with Netanyahu was strained by the enormous Palestinian death toll in the fighting — now standing at more than 46,000 dead — and Israel’s blockade of the territory that has created a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza by leaving access to food and basic health care severely limited.

Pro-Palestinian activists have demanded an arms embargo against Israel, but U.S. policy has largely remained unchanged. The State Department in recent days informed Congress of a planned $8 billion weapons sale to Israel.

Mr. Biden refusal to impose meaningful restrictions on how the Israelis may have helped Israel seriously degrade Hamas and Hezbollah, but it also came with enormous suffering for innocent Palestinians and Lebanese that have been caught in the crossfire of the 15 moths of grinding war. The outgoing one-term Democrat’s critics say his approach could come with long-term ramifications for U.S. standing in the Middle East and may well prove to be stain on Biden’s legacy.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres while speaking about the Israel and Hamas ceasefire deal outside the Security Council at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, U.S., on January 15, 2025.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday it was “imperative” the newly struck Gaza ceasefire removes obstacles to aid deliveries as he welcomed the deal that includes a prisoner and hostage exchange.

Mr. Guterres also called for the “integrity” of Palestinian territory to be respected and for a push to ensure “unified” Palestinian leadership capable of securing peace.

LIVE: Qatar PM confirms Israel, Hamas reach Gaza ceasefire, hostage deal

“It is imperative that this ceasefire removes the significant security and political obstacles to delivering aid across Gaza so that we can support a major increase in urgent life-saving humanitarian support,” he said.

Mr. Guterres has led calls for a ceasefire in the deadly conflict and has advocated for an unhindered flow of aid to the war-torn territory, including that delivered by UN agencies.

“This deal is a critical first step, but we must mobilize all efforts to also advance broader goals, including the preservation of the unity, contiguity and integrity of the occupied Palestinian territory,” he said.

“Palestinian unity is essential for achieving lasting peace and stability, and I emphasize that unified Palestinian governance must remain a top priority.”

Mr. Guterres called on all sides in the conflict to seize the opportunity to secure “a better future for Palestinians, Israelis and the broader region, ending the occupation, and achieving a negotiated two-state solution.”

If the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal goes according to the current draft, then fighting will stop in Gaza for 42 days, and dozens of Israeli hostages and hundreds of Palestinian prisoners will be freed. In this first phase Israeli troops will pull back to the edges of Gaza, and many Palestinians will be able to return to what remains of their homes as stepped-up aid flows in.

The question is if the ceasefire will survive beyond that first phase.

That will depend on even more negotiations meant to begin within weeks. In those talks, Israel, Hamas, and the U.S, Egyptian and Qatari mediators will have to tackle the tough issue of how Gaza will be governed, with Israel demanding the elimination of Hamas.

Read the full article here

Rafah:

Israel’s armed forces bombarded Gaza on Sunday, but officials also said diplomatic efforts were expected to resume in coming days towards a truce and hostage release deal.

Air strikes and artillery shelling rained down again overnight on northern, central and southern area of Gaza in the more than seven-months-old war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack.

Fighting has centred on the far-southern city of Rafah, where Israel has vowed to destroy the last remaining Hamas battalions despite a chorus of international opposition to a ground invasion of the city.

Israel’s assault there from early May led Egypt to shut its side of the Rafah border crossing — but on Sunday, aid trucks from Egypt again rolled into Gaza, this time via the nearby Kerem Shalom crossing.

US President Joe Biden said Saturday his administration was engaged in “urgent diplomacy to secure an immediate ceasefire that brings hostages home”.

Mediator Egypt was also continuing “its efforts to reactivate ceasefire negotiations”, said Al-Qahera News, which has links with Egyptian intelligence.

Israeli media has said intelligence chief David Barnea had agreed a new framework for talks on a ceasefire in a meeting with America’s CIA chief and Qatari mediators in Paris.

An Israeli official, requesting anonymity, told AFP on Saturday that “there is an intention to renew these talks this week”.

However, senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan told Qatar’s Al Jazeera network that so far “there is nothing practical on this issue. It is just talk coming from the Israeli side.”

Bodies pulled from rubble

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come under increasing domestic pressure over the fate of the hostages, with demonstrators rallying again in Tel Aviv on Saturday.

In recent days, the bodies of seven dead hostages have been retrieved from Gaza, heightening the fear and pain of relatives of the remaining captives.

In Tel Aviv, a crowd of several thousands observed a minute of silence Saturday for dead captives.

“I feared this moment,” Avivit Yablonka, whose brother Chanan was brought back dead from Gaza, told the rally. “I will continue to shout, support, fight and do everything so that all the hostages return home.”

Hamas meanwhile said Saturday it had taken “prisoner” at least one Israeli soldier in an ambush in Jabalia camp.

The claim was denied by the army, which said there was “no incident in which a soldier was abducted”.

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

Operatives also took 252 hostages, 121 of whom remain in Gaza, including 37 the army says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 35,903 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

The UN has warned of looming famine in the besieged territory, where most hospitals are no longer functioning.

In the latest fighting, Gaza’s civil defence agency said Sunday it had retrieved six bodies after a house was targeted in a strike on Rafah’s eastern Khirbet al-Adas neighbourhood.

Witnesses said Israeli artillery had also targeted central Rafah’s Yibna camp, and that heavy artillery shelling hit the city’s Sooq al-Halal and Qishta neighbourhoods.

Elsewhere in Gaza, Israeli air strikes targeted the Nuseirat camp, and witnesses said heavy artillery shelling hit northern Gaza.

Israeli tanks in Gaza City rained heavy gunfire on targets in the Zeitun and Netzarim area, an AFP reporter said.

Israel’s military meanwhile said Sunday the arrival of aid had been stepped up, both via a new US-built pier and through its own land crossings, Kerem Shalom and Erez West.

“This week, after the pier began operating for the first time, a total of 1,806 pallets of food were transferred in 127 trucks to logistics centres of international aid agencies in the Gaza Strip,” it said.

“In total, this week, 2,065 humanitarian aid trucks were inspected and transferred through the Kerem Shalom and Erez West crossings, which is almost twice the number in the previous week.”

US Central Command said Saturday that four US Army vessels supporting the pier broke free of their moorings, and had run aground in heavy seas, with Israel aiding the recovery effort.

Global pushback

As the bloodiest ever Gaza war grinds on, Israel has faced heavy global pushback over the surging civilian death toll and the destruction of vast swathes of Gaza.

In the past week it faced landmark moves from two international courts based in The Hague and from three European governments.

Last Monday, the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court said he would seek arrest warrants on war crimes charges against Netanyahu and his defence minister as well as against three top Hamas figures.

On Wednesday, Ireland, Norway and Spain said they would recognise Palestinian statehood by May 28, a move Israel angrily rejected as a “reward for terrorism”.

And on Friday, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to halt its Rafah offensive, demanded the release of hostages and urged the “unhindered provision” of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

The ICJ ruling came in a case brought by South Africa alleging that Israel’s military operation amounts to “genocide”.

It ruled that Israel must “immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”.

Israel has denied any military operations in the Rafah area that “could cause the destruction of the Palestinian civilian population, in whole or in part”.

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

Hamas announced on May 6 it has accepted an Egyptian-Qatari proposal for a ceasefire to halt the seven-month-long war with Israel in Gaza, hours after Israel ordered about 100,000 Palestinians to begin evacuating from the southern city of Rafah, signalling that a long-promised ground invasion there could be imminent.

There was no immediate comment from Israel on the deal, and details of the proposal have not yet been released. In recent days, Egyptian and Hamas officials have said the cease-fire would take place in a series of stages during which Hamas would release hostages it is holding in exchange for Israeli troop pullbacks from Gaza.

It is not clear whether the deal will meet Hamas’ key demand of bringing about an end to the war and complete Israeli withdrawal.

Hamas said in a statement its top leader, Ismail Haniyeh, had delivered the news in a phone call with Qatar’s prime minister and Egypt’s intelligence minister. After the release of the statement, Palestinians erupted in cheers in the sprawling tent camps around Rafah, hoping the deal meant an Israeli attack had been averted.

Israel’s closest allies, including the United States, have repeatedly said that Israel shouldn’t attack Rafah. The looming operation has raised global alarm over the fate of around 1.4 million Palestinians sheltering there.

Aid agencies have warned that an offensive will worsen Gaza’s humanitarian catastrophe and bring a surge of more civilian deaths in an Israeli campaign that in nearly seven months has killed 34,000 people and devastated the territory.

U.S. President Joe Biden spoke Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and reiterated U.S. concerns about an invasion of Rafah. Biden said that a cease-fire with Hamas is the best way to protect the lives of Israeli hostages held in Gaza, a National Security Council spokesperson said on condition of anonymity to discuss the call before an official White House statement was released.

Hamas and key mediator Qatar said that invading Rafah will derail efforts by international mediators to broker a cease-fire. Days earlier, Hamas had been discussing a U.S.-backed proposal that reportedly raised the possibility of an end to the war and a pullout of Israeli troops in return for the release of all hostages held by the group. Israeli officials have rejected that trade-off, vowing to continue their campaign until Hamas is destroyed.

Netanyahu said Monday that seizing Rafah, which Israel says is the last significant Hamas stronghold in Gaza, was vital to ensuring the militants can’t rebuild their military capabilities and repeat the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that triggered the war.

Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an army spokesman, said about 100,000 people were being ordered to move from parts of Rafah to a nearby Israel-declared humanitarian zone called Muwasi, a makeshift camp on the coast. He said that Israel has expanded the size of the zone and that it included tents, food, water and field hospitals.

It wasn’t immediately clear, however, if that material was already in place to accommodate the new arrivals.

Around 450,000 displaced Palestinians already are sheltering in Muwasi. The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, said it has been providing them with aid. But conditions are squalid, with few bathrooms or sanitation facilities in the largely rural area, forcing families to dig private latrines.

After the evacuation order announcement Monday, Palestinians in Rafah wrestled with having to uproot their extended families once again for an unknown fate, exhausted after months living in sprawling tent camps or crammed into schools or other shelters in and around the city. Few who spoke to The Associated Press wanted to risk staying.

Mohammed Jindiyah said that at the beginning of the war, he had tried to hold out in his home in northern Gaza after Israel ordered an evacuation there in October. He ended up suffering through heavy bombardment before fleeing to Rafah.

He’s complying with the order this time, but was unsure now whether to move to Muwasi or another town in central Gaza.

“We are 12 families, and we don’t know where to go. There is no safe area in Gaza,” he said.

Sahar Abu Nahel, who fled to Rafah with 20 family members including her children and grandchildren, wiped tears from her cheeks, despairing at a new move.

“I have no money or anything. I am seriously tired, as are the children,” she said. “Maybe it’s more honorable for us to die. We are being humiliated.” Israeli military leaflets were dropped with maps detailing a number of eastern neighborhoods of Rafah to evacuate, warning that an attack was imminent and anyone who stays “puts themselves and their family members in danger.” Text messages and radio broadcasts repeated the message.

UNRWA won’t evacuate from Rafah so it can continue to provide aid to those who stay behind, said Scott Anderson, the agency’s director in Gaza.

“We will provide aid to people wherever they choose to be,” he told the AP.

The U.N. says an attack on Rafah could disrupt the distribution of aid keeping Palestinians alive across Gaza. The Rafah crossing into Egypt, a main entry point for aid to Gaza, lies in the evacuation zone. The crossing remained open Monday after the Israeli order.

Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, condemned the “forced, unlawful” evacuation order and the idea that people should go to Muwasi.

“The area is already overstretched and devoid of vital services,” Egeland said. He said that an Israeli assault could lead to “the deadliest phase of this war.” Israel’s bombardment and ground offensives in Gaza have killed more than 34,700 Palestinians, around two-thirds of them children and women, according to Gaza health officials. The tally doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants. More than 80% of the population of 2.3 million have been driven from their homes, and hundreds of thousands in the north are on the brink of famine, according to the U.N.

Tensions escalated Sunday when Hamas fired rockets at Israeli troops positioned on the border with Gaza near Israel’s main crossing for delivering humanitarian aid, killing four soldiers. Israel shuttered the crossing — but Shoshani said it wouldn’t affect how much aid enters Gaza as others are working.

Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes on Rafah killed 22 people, including children and two infants, according to a hospital.

The war was sparked by the unprecedented Oct. 7 raid into southern Israel in which Hamas and other militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 hostages. After exchanges during a November cease-fire, Hamas is believed to still hold about 100 Israelis captive as well the bodies of around 30 others.

The mediators over the cease-fire — the United States, Egypt and Qatar — had appeared to scramble to salvage a cease-fire deal they had been trying to push through the past week. Egypt said it was in touch with all sides Monday to “prevent the situation from … getting out of control.” CIA Director William Burns, who had been in Cairo for talks on the deal, headed to meet the prime minister of Qatar, an official familiar with the matter said. It wasn’t clear whether a subsequent trip to Israel that had been planned would happen. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door negotiations.

In a fiery speech Sunday evening marking Israel’s Holocaust memorial day, Netanyahu rejected international pressure to halt the war, saying that “if Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone.” On Monday, Netanyahu accused Hamas of “torpedoing” a deal by not budging from its demand for an end to the war and a complete Israeli troop withdrawal in return for the hostages’ release, which he called “extreme.”

Cargo trucks park in Egypt, near the Egyptian-Israeli border, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, as seen from Israel, on April 28, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

A senior Hamas official told AFP on April 28 that the group would deliver its response to Israel’s latest counterproposal for a Gaza ceasefire on April 29 in Egypt.

“A Hamas delegation headed by Khalil al-Hayya will arrive in Egypt tomorrow… and deliver the movement’s response” to the Israeli proposal during a meeting with Egyptian intelligence officials, said the official who declined to be named.

Mediator Egypt had sent its own delegation to Israel this week to jump-start stalled negotiations even as fighting in the Gaza Strip rages.

Egypt, Qatar and the United States have been unsuccessfully trying to broker a new Gaza truce deal ever since a one-week halt to the fighting in November saw 80 Israeli hostages exchanged for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

Diplomatic efforts have been stepped up in recent days to reach a truce and hostage-release deal.

U.S. news website Axios, citing two Israeli officials, reported that Israel’s latest proposal includes a willingness to discuss the “restoration of sustainable calm” in Gaza after hostages are released.

It is the first time in the nearly seven-month war that Israeli leaders have suggested they are open to discussing an end to the war, Axios said.

“Hamas is open to discussing the new proposal positively,” another Hamas source close to the negotiations told AFP.

The source added that the group is “keen to reach an agreement that guarantees a permanent ceasefire, the free return of displaced people, an acceptable deal for (prisoner) exchange and ensuring an end to the (Gaza) siege”.

The delegation would also discuss an Egyptian proposal concerning a ceasefire and prisoner exchange as part of the overall deal to stop the fighting in Gaza, the source said.

He said the Egyptian proposal showed “some progress”.

It guarantees absence of Israeli forces on Al-Rashid road, a key artery in the strip, when displaced Palestinians return from the south of the territory to the north, he said.

It also proposes that Israeli forces remain 500 m away from the main Salaheddin highway and ensures that civilians are not subjected to shooting, arrest or detention when they return to their homes.

Al-Qahera News, which is linked to Egyptian intelligence services, reported “noticeable progress in bringing the views of the Egyptian and Israeli delegations closer”.

Impasse

For several weeks now negotiations to end the war had hit an impasse.

In early April, Hamas had said it was studying a proposal, after talks in Cairo, and Al-Qahera reported progress. Days later Israel and Hamas accused each other of undermining negotiations.

Thousands of Israeli protesters meanwhile have stepped up pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to strike a deal that would see the remaining hostages freed.

The Israeli Army says 129 hostages are still held captive in Gaza, including 34 it says are dead.

Some 250 people were abducted by Palestinian militants when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7.

The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, Israeli and foreigners, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive in Gaza has killed 34,454 people, most of them women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s Health Ministry.