Israel strikes Gaza as ceasefire talks set to begin
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Boston Globe
39 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Israeli strikes kill at least 32 in Gaza as Palestinian war deaths top 58,000
Advertisement Throughout the war in Gaza, violence has surged in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Funerals were held there Sunday for two Palestinians, including Palestinian-American Sayfollah Musallet, killed by Israeli settlers, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Children killed and Israel blames a technical error In central Gaza, officials at Al-Awda Hospital said it received 10 bodies after an Israeli strike on a water collection point in nearby Nuseirat. Among the dead were six children. Ramadan Nassar, a witness who lives in the area, told The Associated Press that around 20 children and 14 adults had been lined up to get water. He said Palestinians walk some 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) to fetch water from the area. The Israeli military said it was targeting a militant but a technical error made its munitions fall 'dozens of meters from the target.' Advertisement In Nuseirat, a small boy leaned over a body bag to say goodbye to a friend. 'There is no safe place,' resident Raafat Fanouna said as some people went over the rubble with sticks and bare hands. Separately, health officials said an Israeli strike hit a group of citizens walking in the street on Sunday afternoon in central Gaza City, killing 11 people and injuring around 30 others. Dr. Ahmed Qandil, who specializes in general surgery, was among those killed, Gaza's Health Ministry said. A ministry spokesperson, Zaher al-Wahidi, told the AP that Qandil had been on his way to Al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital. In the central town of Zawaida, an Israeli strike on a home killed nine, including two women and three children, officials at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said. Later, Al-Awda Hospital said a strike on a group of people in Zawaida killed two. Israel's military said it was unaware of the strike on the home, but said it hit more than 150 targets over the past 24 hours, including what it called weapons storage facilities, missile launchers and sniping posts. Israel blames Hamas for civilian casualties because the militant group operates out of populated areas. Gaza's Health Ministry says women and children make up more than half of the over 58,000 dead in the war. The ministry, under Gaza's Hamas-run government, doesn't differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count. The U.N. and other international organizations see its figures as the most reliable statistics on war casualties. The Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that sparked the war killed some 1,200 people and abducted 251. Israel's Energy Minister Eli Cohen told right-wing Channel 14 that his ministry will not help rebuild infrastructure in Gaza. 'Gaza should remain an island of ruins to the next decades,' he said. Advertisement Funeral for Palestinian-American killed in the West Bank In the West Bank, which has seen violence between Israeli troops and Palestinians and Israeli settlers' attacks on Palestinians, funerals were held for a Palestinian-American and a Palestinian friend. The Palestinian Health Ministry said Musallet, from Florida, had been beaten by Israeli settlers. Diana Halum, a cousin, said the attack occurred on his family's land. The ministry initially identified him as Seifeddine Musalat, 23. Musallet's friend, Mohammed al-Shalabi, was shot in the chest, the ministry said. Israel's military has said Palestinians hurled rocks at Israelis in the area on Friday, lightly wounding two people and setting off a larger confrontation. Palestinians and rights groups have long accused the military of ignoring settler violence. Their bodies were carried through the streets on Sunday as mourners waved Palestinian flags and chanted, 'God is great.' Musallet's family has said it wants the U.S. State Department to investigate his death and hold the settlers accountable. The State Department said it had no comment out of respect for the family. Isseid reported from Al-Mazraa a-Sharqiya, West Bank. Associated Press writers Fatma Khaled in Cairo and Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this report.
News24
6 hours ago
- News24
Israeli missile hits Gaza children collecting water, IDF blames malfunction
At least eight Palestinians, most of them children, were killed and more than a dozen others were wounded in central Gaza on Sunday, local officials said, in an Israeli missile strike which the military said missed its intended target. The Israeli military said it had intended to hit an Islamic Jihad militant in the area but that a malfunction had caused the missile to fall 'dozens of metres from the target'. 'The IDF regrets any harm to uninvolved civilians,' it said in a statement, adding that the incident was under review. The strike hit a water distribution point in Nuseirat refugee camp, killing six children and injuring 17 others, said Ahmed Abu Saifan, an emergency physician at Al-Awda Hospital. Water shortages in Gaza have worsened sharply in recent weeks, with fuel shortages causing desalination and sanitation facilities to close, making people dependent on collection centres where they can fill up their plastic containers. In another attack, Palestinian media reported that a prominent hospital consultant was among 12 people killed by an Israeli strike mid-morning on a busy market in Gaza City. Saeed MMT Jaras/Anadolu via Getty Images Gaza's health ministry said on Sunday that more than 58 000 people had been killed since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in October 2023, with 139 people added to the death toll over the past 24 hours. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and fighters in its tally, but says over half of those killed are women and children. Talks blocked Talks aimed at securing a ceasefire appeared to be deadlocked, with the two sides divided over the extent of an eventual Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian enclave, Palestinian and Israeli sources said at the weekend. The indirect talks over a US proposal for a 60-day ceasefire were continuing in Doha, but optimism that surfaced last week of a possible deal has largely faded, with both sides accusing each other of intransigence. READ | 'Window of opportunity' in Gaza truce talks between Hamas and Israel closing amid sticking points The war began on 7 October 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel, killing about 1 200 people and taking 251 hostages into Gaza. At least 20 of the remaining 50 hostages there are believed to still be alive. Israel's campaign against Hamas has displaced almost the entire population of more than 2 million people, but Gazans say nowhere is safe in the coastal enclave. Early on Sunday morning, a missile hit a house in Gaza City where a family had moved to after receiving an evacuation order from their home in the southern outskirts. 'My aunt, her husband and the children are gone. What is the fault of the children who died in an ugly bloody massacre at dawn?' said Anas Matar, standing in the rubble of the building. 'They came here, and they were hit. There is no safe place in Gaza,' he said.
CNN
7 hours ago
- CNN
As ceasefire talks stutter, dozens are being killed every day in Gaza
The talks on a new ceasefire for Gaza have stuttered in Doha – while in Gaza itself dozens of people are being killed every day as the Israeli military consolidates its control over large parts of the territory. Hope had been high for the latest negotiations but after days of negotiations the two sides accused each other of blocking an agreement while on the ground there has been no let-up in Israel's military campaign, which resumed when the last ceasefire collapsed in March. The Palestinian health ministry reported Sunday that 139 bodies had been brought to Gaza hospitals in the past 24 hours, with a number of victims still under the rubble. The number is the highest reported since July 2. The ministry said the latest casualties brought the total number of people killed since October 7, 2023 to 58,026. In just one incident on Saturday, the ministry said 27 were killed and many more injured when Israeli troops opened fire on people trying to obtain aid from a distribution site near southern Rafah run by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). GHF denied the claim, saying 'there were no incidents at or in the immediate vicinity of our sites' on Saturday. The Israeli military also denied that anyone was injured by gunfire from its troops in the vicinity of the site but said it continued to review the reports. It told CNN Sunday it had no further comment. However, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said its field hospital near the site had received 132 patients suffering from weapon-related injuries. Twenty-five were declared dead on arrival and six more died after being admitted – the largest number of fatalities since the hospital began operations in May 2024, according to the ICRC. 'This situation is unacceptable. The alarming frequency and scale of these mass casualty incidents underscore the horrific conditions civilians in Gaza are enduring,' the ICRC added. Nearly 800 Palestinians were killed while trying to access aid in Gaza between late May and July 7, according to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), when the GHF began operating. Elsewhere in Gaza, 13 people were killed Saturday in airstrikes in Al-Shati refugee camp near Gaza City, in the north of the territory, according to Mohammed Abu Salmiya, director of Al-Shifa Hospital. Salmiya told CNN that 40 injured people had been admitted. Geolocated video showed at least one child among the victims. On Sunday morning, six children were among ten people killed in an airstrike close to a water distribution site in Nuseirat in central Gaza, according to Al-Awda Hospital. It said it had received 16 injured people. Also in central Gaza, 11 people were killed and more than 50 injured when an Israeli airstrike targeted a crowded junction in central Gaza City, according to Civil Defense officials. The Israel Defense Forces said Sunday it had destroyed weapons and tunnels used by Hamas in northern Gaza and the air force had carried out attacks on more than 150 targets across the Gaza Strip, including 'booby-trapped buildings, weapons depots, anti-tank missile and sniper positions.' The spike in casualties in Gaza comes as talks on agreeing a new ceasefire deal and hostage continue in Doha, with optimism having faded that an agreement can be quickly reached. US President Donald Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff said Tuesday he was hopeful of a deal by the end of the week. 'We had four issues, and now we're down to one after two days of proximity talks,' Witkoff said. The same day Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed Gaza at length at the White House. 'We got to get that solved,' Trump said. But despite days of proximity talks in Doha between Israel and Hamas, significant gaps remain between the warring parties. An Israeli source familiar with the matter said last week that the outstanding issue was where the Israeli military would redeploy in Gaza once the ceasefire takes effect. The latest proposal called for the military to withdraw from parts of northern Gaza on the first day of a ceasefire and from parts of southern Gaza on the seventh day. The detailed maps were left to negotiations between Israel and Hamas, and that appears to be the main sticking point. The talks had 'stalled,' a senior Hamas official told CNN on Saturday, claiming Israel had added new conditions, 'the latest being new deployment maps for the Israeli army's presence in the Gaza Strip.' But an Israeli political source told CNN Saturday that 'Israel has shown willingness to be flexible in the negotiations' and that 'Hamas remains obstinate, sticking to positions that prevent the mediators from advancing an agreement.' Netanyahu is set to meet Sunday with his national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, to discuss the negotiations, according to a source familiar with the matter. Ben Gvir and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich – the far-right members of Netanyahu's government – have both been vocal critics of any deal with Hamas, instead calling for Israel to cut off aid to Gaza and escalate its war until the militant group is destroyed. Recent opinion surveys in Israel suggest overwhelming approval for a deal that would end the war and return all the hostages, living and dead. A poll for Israel's Channel 12 Friday said that 74% of the public believes that Israel should end the war in Gaza in exchange for the return of all the abductees in one step, with only 8% supporting the phased deal that the government is trying to promote. Netanyahu has insisted that Israel has the right to return to combat at the end of the 60-day ceasefire now on the table. Hamas is demanding a pathway to an indefinite cessation of hostilities, with the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
