Deadly Israeli strikes as conflict enters 10th month

Israel carried out deadly airstrikes in the Gaza Strip as the war entered its 10th month on Sunday.

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

Israel said it would send a delegation this week to continue truce talks with Qatari mediators that began recently in Doha.

But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman said “gaps” remained with Hamas on how to secure a ceasefire and hostage release deal.

Meanwhile, the fighting in Gaza continued unabated, with the Palestinian Red Crescent saying on Sunday that the bodies of six people, including two children, who were killed in Israeli strikes had arrived at al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah.

Paramedics also said six ­people had been killed in an Israeli strike on a house in a northern area of Gaza City.

The day before, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said 16 people had been 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.

Israeli mounted police disperse protesters during an anti-government demonstration in Tel Aviv on Saturday. Picture: AFP

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 strip, including Shujaiya in the north, Deir al-Balah and Rafah in the south. Shujaiya is among the areas the military had previously ­declared to be cleared of Hamas, but where fighting has since resumed.

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

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

The US, which has mediated ceasefire negotiations 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 path to a truce deal in May that he said had been proposed by Israel. It included an initial six-week truce, an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza’s population centres and the freeing of hostages held by Palestinian militants.

People search the rubble of a collapsed building in the aftermath of Israeli bombardment at the Jaouni school run by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip on Saturday. Picture: AFP

Talks subsequently stalled, but a US official said on 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 said 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,” he said.

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

Pressure has mounted domestically for another 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 on Saturday.

The war began with Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of about 1200 ­people, mostly civilians. The militants 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 per cent 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 Mr Netanyahu and his far-right coalition partners strongly reject.

AFP