Deadly attacks in Gaza ahead of further ceasefire talks | World news

Israel carried out deadly air strikes on Gaza on Saturday. One of these attacks targeted a United Nations school, in which 16 people were killed, according to the Hamas government. Violence has also broken out on the country’s northern border with Lebanon.

Fighting continued as diplomatic efforts to end the war, which entered its tenth month on Sunday, continued. Israel said on Friday it would send a delegation next week to continue talks with Qatari mediators.

In a statement announcing the move, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman said there were continuing “discussions” with Hamas on how to achieve a ceasefire and the release of the hostages.

Previously, a delegation led by the head of the Israeli secret service Mossad, David Barnea, held a first round of talks with mediators in Doha.

“It was agreed that Israeli negotiators will travel to Doha next week to continue the talks. There are still differences of opinion between the parties,” the spokesman said.

There has been no ceasefire since a week-long pause in November, during which 80 Israeli hostages were released in exchange for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

The war continued unabated. The Health Ministry of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip said 16 people were killed in an attack on a school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) that housed displaced people in Nuseirat in central Gaza.

The Israeli military said its planes had targeted “terrorists” operating in the vicinity of the Al-Jawni school.

The military had previously said it had carried out operations in large parts of the Gaza Strip, including Shujaiya in the north, Deir al-Balah in central Gaza and Rafah in the south.

Shujaiya is one of the areas that the military had previously declared cleared of Hamas, but where fighting has broken out again.

Paramedics reported ten deaths in a separate airstrike on a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp on Saturday.

Hamas’ press office and medics said four local media journalists were killed in attacks overnight, and the UNRWA relief agency said two of its staff were killed.

The UNRWA relief agency, which coordinates much of the aid for Gaza, said 194 of its staff had been killed in the war.

The United States, which is mediating the talks alongside Qatar and Egypt, said it was in favor of an agreement and said there were “pretty big opportunities” for both sides.

US President Joe Biden announced in May a path to a ceasefire agreement that he said had been proposed by Israel.

These included an initial six-week ceasefire, Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza’s population centers, and the release of hostages held by Palestinian militants.

Talks subsequently stalled, but a US official said Thursday that a new Hamas proposal “advances the process and could form the basis for concluding the agreement.”

Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan told AFP that the group’s new ideas were “passed on by the mediators to the American side, which welcomed them and passed them on to the Israeli side. Now the ball is in Israel’s court.”

Domestic pressure has increased to reach an agreement to release the hostages; protests and rallies are taking place regularly in Israel.

“It is important that we reach an agreement so that all mothers can hug their children and husbands, just as I now hug my mother every morning,” rescued hostage Almog Mair Jan said in a recorded message at a rally in Tel Aviv on Saturday.

The war began with Hamas’ unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7, which left 1,195 people, mostly civilians, dead, according to an AFP count based on Israeli figures.

The militants also took hostages, 116 of whom are still in the Gaza Strip. According to the military, 42 of them are dead.

In response, Israel launched a military offensive that killed at least 38,098 people, mostly civilians, according to the Health Ministry of the Hamas-ruled Gaza area.

The war has displaced 90 percent of Gaza’s population, destroyed much of its homes and other infrastructure, and left nearly 500,000 people suffering from “catastrophic” hunger, UN agencies say.

The biggest obstacle to a ceasefire is Hamas’s demand for a permanent end to the fighting, which Netanyahu and his far-right coalition partners firmly reject.

The veteran hawk calls for the release of the hostages and insists that the war will not end until Israel has destroyed Hamas’s ability to fight and govern.

Israel and the Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah movement have been engaged in almost daily cross-border shelling since the Gaza war began, but the attacks escalated in the last month.

This raises fears that a major conflict could arise between the bitter enemies, which could also draw others, including Iran, into it.

Sirens blared over northern Israel early Saturday and the military said it had shot down a “suspicious aerial target” and two “enemy aircraft” that had taken off from Lebanon had crashed into open terrain.

The military had previously said it had attacked “a number of Hezbollah terror targets in southern Lebanon” overnight, all near the border.

A source close to Hezbollah said an Israeli drone strike hit a vehicle in eastern Lebanon on Saturday, killing a Hezbollah official who Israel said was a member of the group’s air defense unit.

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This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without any modifications.