DEIR AL BARAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — More than 45,000 Palestinians have now been killed. war in gaza Frequent ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas militants appear to be on track, health officials in the war zone announced Monday.
qatar, egypt, US The two countries have made renewed efforts in recent days to broker a ceasefire agreement, with Defense Minister Israel Katz saying on Monday that he believed negotiators were closer than ever to a deal. . last armistice agreementthere was a one-week pause in November 2023, and 105 hostages were released.
“Everyone’s guess is that opportunities are emerging in response to the need for Hamas to become more flexible and take practical steps in this process,” Katz said ahead of a closed session of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. I sincerely hope that we can do that.” .
Israel and Hamas’ main ally, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, agreed to a ceasefire late last month.
The Palestinian Health Authority updated the death toll in the Gaza Strip to 45,028. They say 106,962 other people have been injured since the war began, and the real toll comes as thousands of bodies are buried under rubble and in areas inaccessible to medical workers. He warned that there were many more.
The ministry’s tally does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but it says more than half of the dead were women and children. The Israeli military said, without providing evidence, that it had killed more than 17,000 militants.
This war is the deadliest conflict between Israel and Hamas, with the death toll accounting for approximately 2% of Gaza’s pre-war population of approximately 2.3 million.
Another airstrike hits shelter, killing family
According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, more than 50 dead people were taken to hospitals across the bombed area in the past 24 hours.
Ten people, including four family members, were among those killed in an overnight Israeli attack in Gaza City’s eastern Shijaiyah neighborhood, Palestinian medical officials said.
Israel claims Hamas is responsible for the civilian deaths because it operates within civilian areas of the densely populated Gaza Strip. Human rights groups and Palestinians say Israel has not taken sufficient precautions to avoid civilian deaths.
The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians. 250 more people kidnapped. Israel responded with heavy artillery bombardment and ground invasions of Palestinian enclaves. There are still about 100 hostages in Gaza, and at least one-third are thought to have died. Most of the rest were released during last year’s ceasefire.
At least 13 people, including six children and two women, were killed in another attack on a school in the southern city of Khan Yunis on Sunday, according to Nasser Hospital, where the bodies were taken. The hospital initially reported that 16 people had died in the strike, but later said the three bodies were the result of a separate strike.
Louise Waterridge, a spokeswoman for the United Nations relief agency for the Palestinians, said she had met with children injured in Sunday’s strike. Among them was a 17-year-old girl who suffered severe leg injuries and shrapnel wounds.
She survived, along with her twin sister and three other sisters, but her mother was killed, Waterridge said. Ms Waterridge said one of her sisters told her “how her mother’s bones were crumbling under the rubble”. There was nothing they could do to save her. ”
The Israeli military said it attacked Hamas fighters operating inside a command center built into a compound used as a school in Khan Yunis. No evidence was presented.
Palestinian journalist pays tribute
Mourners gathered at the Nuseyrat urban refugee camp in central Gaza for the funeral of a Palestinian journalist who worked for the Qatar-based Al Jazeera television station who was killed in an attack on a Gaza civil defense agency on Sunday. They carried his body, along with a bulletproof vest, through the city.
Al Jazeera said Ahmad Baker Al Row, 39, was covering rescue efforts for families injured in an earlier bombing when he was killed.
According to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, three civil defense personnel were also killed in the attack, including a local chief engineer. Civil Defense is Gaza’s main relief agency and operates under the Hamas-run government.
international federation of journalists announced last week that 104 journalists and media workers would be killed in 2024, more than half of them in Gaza.
The Israeli military said the attack targeted Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants in a command center housed in the offices of a “civil defense” organization. The newspaper accused the journalist of being a member of Islamic Jihad, a charge denied by his colleagues in Gaza.
Gaza’s civil defense authorities rejected claims that militants operated from the scene.
“We were stunned by the Israeli occupation statement,” Mahmoud al-Rau, a cousin of the journalist, told The Associated Press. “These claims are false and misleading in order to cover up this crime.”
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Magdy reported from Cairo. Melanie Lidman in Jerusalem contributed.
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