At least 60 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, health officials said, including in an attack on a school sheltering displaced people and another on an Israeli-designated “humanitarian zone,” as ceasefire talks in the nearly 10-month-old conflict appear to have stalled again.
The Red Crescent said Tuesday that 17 people were killed in a bombing near a gas station in Mawasi, a Mediterranean coastal area home to hundreds of thousands of displaced people and which Israel had previously declared an evacuation zone. Another 16 people were killed in a strike targeting the U.N.-run al-Awda school in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, medics at a nearby hospital said.
In a statement, the Israeli military said Hamas militants were present at the school. The military had no immediate comment on the Mawasi strike, but said aircraft struck about 40 targets in Gaza on Tuesday, including firing and observation posts, military structures and explosive-laden buildings.
The armed wings of Hamas and the Hamas-allied Palestinian Islamic Jihad said their fighters attacked Israeli forces in several locations with anti-tank rockets and mortar shells. The armed wing of Islamic Jihad said it fired missiles at Sderot in southern Israel, but no damage or casualties were reported.
Over the past two weeks, Israel has bombarded the besieged Palestinian territory with some of its heaviest airstrikes in months, the deadliest targeting Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif in a bombing Saturday in Mawasi that killed more than 90 people. It was not immediately clear whether Deif, who has been wanted by Israel for decades, was killed in the strike.
In a statement Tuesday, the Israeli military said it had “eliminated” about half of Hamas’ leadership in Gaza and 14,000 soldiers since the start of the war, following the Palestinian militant group’s deadly attack on Israel on October 7, in which 1,200 people were killed and 250 others were taken hostage. More than 38,400 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory operation in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, and the population of 2.3 million is in dire need of food, water, medicine and shelter.
Hamas has not commented on Israel’s statements. Deif’s death would be a morale boost for Israel, which in nearly ten months of fighting has yet to eliminate one of Hamas’s three top leaders in Gaza.
The attacks on Deif and subsequent deadly attacks on Gaza appear to have contributed to the impasse in negotiations on a ceasefire and a hostage-prisoner exchange underway in Qatar and Egypt. The talks stalled on Saturday, Egyptian mediators told local media.
Hamas has sent mixed messages about its future participation in the talks, which were the most promising in a series of failed negotiations since an initial cease-fire and hostage release deal was brokered in November. That truce collapsed after a week, following what the United States said was Hamas’s inability or refusal to release more Israeli prisoners.
The latest statement by Qatar-based Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh on Sunday stressed that the group was withdrawing from the indirect talks in protest over recent Israeli “massacres,” but that the group was ready to return to the negotiating table if Israel “shows seriousness in reaching a ceasefire agreement and a prisoner exchange deal.”
A Palestinian official close to the negotiations told Reuters that Hamas did not want to appear to be suspending talks despite the intensified Israeli attacks. “Hamas wants the war to end, not at any cost. It says it has shown the necessary flexibility and is pressuring the mediators to do the same,” he said.
The group accuses Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of seeking to derail a deal and an end to the war for his own political gain. On Tuesday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant nevertheless sounded optimistic, telling the families of five female soldiers kidnapped in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that “this is the closest we’ve ever been to an agreement,” according to Israel’s Channel 12.
Disagreements over the identity and number of Israeli hostages and Palestinians held in Israeli prisons have repeatedly derailed truce negotiations. The situation is complicated by the fact that in May, Israel took control of the Rafah border crossing into Egypt, which Hamas and international delegations say must be returned to the Palestinians.
US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters that two senior advisers to Mr Netanyahu had said Israel remained committed to a ceasefire. He also criticised the “unacceptable” number of civilian casualties in recent days.
Washington, Israel’s most important ally, has provided significant military and diplomatic cover for Israel’s war in Gaza, despite the negative domestic fallout.
Also on Monday, the EU added to a wave of international measures against Israeli extremists, announcing new sanctions against three well-known Israeli settler leaders in the occupied West Bank and against a pro-settlement group, Regavim, founded by Israel’s current far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
News Source : www.theguardian.com
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