Gaza:

Israel carried out deadly air strikes in the Gaza Strip on Sunday as the war entered its 10th month, with fighting raging across the Palestinian territory and fresh diplomatic efforts underway to halt the violence.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement fired another 20 rockets at northern Israel, leaving one person injured there, the latest cross-border attacks launched in solidarity with Gaza’s Palestinian group Hamas. 

Efforts towards a truce continued with US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators hoping to halt the worst-ever Gaza war, which has caused mass civilian casualties and devastated the coastal territory since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.

Egypt’s Al-Qahera News reported that Cairo was “hosting Israeli and American delegations to discuss the outstanding points” for a ceasefire and hostage release deal, citing an unnamed high-level official source.

Mediators were in contact with Hamas amid “intensive Egyptian meetings this week with all parties to push efforts” for a truce, said the news report late Saturday, without giving further details or dates.

Israel has also said it would send a delegation in the coming days to continue talks with Qatari mediators, even though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman said Friday that “gaps” remained with Hamas.

US President Joe Biden announced a plan in late May that included an initial six-week truce and the exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners.

Talks subsequently stalled, but a US official said Thursday that a new proposal from Hamas “moves the process forward and may provide the basis for closing the deal”.

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

Heavy clashes

The fighting and bombardment in besieged Gaza raged on unabated on Sunday, with medics and emergency services in the Hamas-run territory reporting yet more deaths in several strikes.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said the bodies of six people including two children were taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah.

And paramedics said six people were killed in one strike on a house in Gaza City and three in another elsewhere in Gaza’s largest urban area.

An AFP correspondent said Israeli drones were firing in Gaza City’s Shujaiya district, which has been largely evacuated and rocked by intense battles for two weeks.

The Israeli army said that in Shujaiya, its “troops eliminated several terrorists, dismantled terror infrastructure sites and located numerous weapons, including explosive devices, AK-47 rifles, machine guns and pistols”.

It also said 30 “terrorists” had been killed in far-southern Rafah over the past day and that Israeli forces had carried out an operation in nearby Khan Yunis where Hamas had taken up position in a municipality building.

On Saturday, the Gaza health ministry said 16 people were killed in a strike on a school run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA that was sheltering displaced people in Nuseirat, in central Gaza.

The Israeli military said its aircraft had targeted “terrorists” operating around the Al-Jawni school.

‘Catastrophic hunger’

The war began with Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

Hamas also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza, including 42 the military says are dead.

In response, Israel has carried out a military offensive that has killed at least 38,098 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory.

The war has uprooted 90 percent of Gaza’s population, left almost 500,000 people enduring “catastrophic” hunger and shuttered most hospitals, UN agencies say.

“The situation is very difficult,” said Dr Muhammad Salha, acting director of Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia. 

“There is no fuel in the hospital to work. We only operate the small generator for two hours a day and we have postponed many scheduled operations due to the lack of fuel.”

Hezbollah rockets

Amid the Gaza war, Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah have exchanged almost daily cross-border fire and the attacks and rhetoric have escalated over the past month, sparking fears of a full-scale war.

While the exchanges have been largely restricted to the border areas, Israel has repeatedly struck deep inside eastern Lebanon, including on Saturday in a strike that killed a Hezbollah operative.

Early on Sunday, air raid sirens again sounded across northern Israel and the army then reported that 20 rockets were fired, some of which were intercepted by air defence systems.

One person was wounded by shrapnel in Kfar Zeitim near Tiberias, around 30 kilometres (over 18 miles) inside Israel, local police said, adding they were in stable condition.

Hezbollah said that “in response to the attack and assassination that the Israeli enemy carried out”, it had targeted “one of the main bases” in northern Israel, west of Tiberias, with “dozens of Katyusha rockets”.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Palestinian Territories:

Israel carried out deadly airstrikes in Gaza Saturday, including one on a UN-run school that killed 16 people according to the Hamas-run authorities, and as violence also gripped its northern border with Lebanon.

The fighting raged as diplomatic efforts to halt the war, which enters its tenth month on Sunday, continued with Israel saying 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 spokesperson said “gaps” remained with Hamas on how to secure a ceasefire and hostage release deal.

That came after a delegation led by Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency chief David Barnea held a first round of talks with mediators in Doha.

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

There has been no truce since a one-week pause in November during which 80 Israeli hostages were freed in return for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

The war continued unabated, with Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry saying 16 people were killed in a strike on a school run by UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, that was sheltering displaced people in Nuseirat in central Gaza.

The Israeli military said its aircraft had targeted “terrorists” operating around the Al-Jawni school.

The military earlier said it had conducted operations across much of the Gaza Strip, including Shujaiya in the north, Deir al-Balah in central Gaza and Rafah in the south.

Shujaiya is among the areas the military had previously declared to be cleared of Hamas, but where fighting is again taking place.

Paramedics on Saturday reported 10 deaths in a separate air strike on a house in Nuseirat refugee camp.

The Hamas press office and paramedics said four journalists working for local media outlets were killed in strikes overnight, and UNRWA said two of its employees had been killed.

UNRWA, which coordinates much of the aid delivered to Gaza, says 194 of its employees have been killed in the war.

‘Ball in Israel’s court’

The United States, which has mediated talks alongside Qatar and Egypt, has talked up the prospects of a deal saying there is a “pretty significant opening” for both sides.

US President Joe Biden announced a pathway to a truce deal in May that he said had been proposed by Israel.

This included an initial six-week truce, Israeli withdrawal from Gaza population centres and the freeing of hostages by Hamas.

Talks subsequently stalled, but a US official said Thursday that a new proposal from Hamas “moves the process forward and may provide the basis for closing the deal”.

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

Pressure has mounted domestically for a hostage release deal, with regular protests and rallies in Israel.

“It’s important that we reach a deal so that all the mothers can embrace their children and husbands, just as I hug my mother every morning now,” rescued hostage Almog Mair Jan said in a recorded message to a rally in Tel Aviv Saturday.

The war began with Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures. Hamas also seized hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza including 42 the military says are dead.

In response, Israel has carried out a military offensive that has killed at least 38,098 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory.

The war has uprooted 90 percent of Gaza’s population, destroyed much of its housing and other infrastructure, and left almost 500,000 people enduring “catastrophic” hunger, UN agencies say.

The main stumbling block to a truce deal has been Hamas’s demand for a permanent end to the fighting, which Netanyahu and his far-right coalition partners strongly reject.

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

Sirens and air strikes

Israel and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement have exchanged cross-border fire almost daily since the Gaza war began, but attacks have escalated over the past month.

This has raised fears of a major conflagration between the staunch enemies that could draw in others including Iran.

Early Saturday, sirens blared over northern Israel and the military said it had downed a “suspicious aerial target” and two “hostile aircraft” launched from Lebanon hit open ground.

The military said earlier 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 targeted a vehicle in eastern Lebanon Saturday, killing an official from Hezbollah. Israel said he was part of the group’s air defence unit.

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

Palestinians carry a casualty on rubble in the aftermath of Israeli strikes, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip October 11, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Israel bombed Gaza overnight ahead of a potential ground assault against Hamas while U.S. President Joe Biden condemned the Palestinian militant group’s surprise attack as “sheer evil” and issued a warning seemingly aimed at its Iranian backers.

Israel’s death toll reached 1,200 with more than 2,700 wounded, its military said, from Hamas militants’ hours-long rampage after breaching the border fence around Gaza on Saturday.

The group’s armed wing, al Qassam Brigades, said it was still fighting inside Israel on Wednesday, as Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles assembled in large numbers just north of Gaza. and Hamas’ armed wing.

Israel-Hamas war, day 5, LIVE updates | Netanyahu, opposition agree on unity government and war cabinet

Retaliatory strikes on the blockaded enclave have killed 1,055 people and wounded 5,184, Palestinian officials say.

The Israeli military said dozens of its fighter jets struck more than 200 targets in a neighbourhood of Gaza City overnight that it said had been used by Hamas to launch its attacks.

“Hamas wanted a change and it will get one. What was in Gaza will no longer be,” Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told soldiers near the fence on Tuesday. “We started the offensive from the air, later on we will also come from the ground.”

Israel said it was shifting all schools to remote learning from Sunday and stepping up issuing firearms to licensed citizens, predicting possible friction between its majority Jews and Arab minority amid calls for more protests in support of Gaza’s Palestinians.

In another sign of the crisis widening, Israeli shelling hit southern Lebanese towns after a rocket attack by the powerful armed group Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran. It was the fourth consecutive day of violence there and followed shelling from Syria on Tuesday that Israel said it was investigating.