At least 60 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip, health officials have 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 appeared to stall again.
The Red Crescent said on Tuesday that 17 people were killed in a bombing near a petrol station in Mawasi, an area on the Mediterranean shoreline packed with hundreds of thousands of displaced people that Israel had previously declared an evacuation zone. Another 16 were killed in a strike that targeted the UN-run al-Awda school in central Gaza's Nuseirat refugee camp, medics at a nearby hospital said.
In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Hamas militants were present at the school. There was no immediate comment on the strike in Mawasi but the army said the air force had struck about 40 targets in Gaza on Tuesday, including sniping and observation posts, military structures and buildings rigged with explosives.
The armed wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a Hamas ally, said their fighters had attacked Israeli forces in several locations with anti-tank rockets and mortar bombs. Islamic Jihad's armed wing said it had fired missiles at Sderot in southern Israel, but no damage or casualties were reported.
Over the past two weeks, Israel has hit the besieged Palestinian territory with some of the fiercest bombardments in months, the deadliest of which targeted Mohammed Deif, Hamas's military commander, in a bombing in Mawasi on Saturday that killed more than 90 people. It is still unclear whether Deif, wanted by Israel for decades, was killed in the strike.
In a statement on Tuesday, the IDF said it had 'eliminated' approximately half of the Hamas leadership in Gaza and 14,000 soldiers since the war broke out after the Palestinian militant group's deadly attack on Israel on 7 October in which 1,200 people were killed and another 250 taken hostage. More than 38,400 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's retaliatory operation in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-administered territory, and the population of 2.3 million people is in dire need of food, water, medicine and shelter.
There was no immediate comment from Hamas on Israel's claim. Killing Deif would be a much-needed morale boost for Israel, which in almost 10 months of fighting has so far failed to take out any of the top three Hamas leaders in Gaza.
The targeting of Deif and subsequent deadly attacks on Gaza appear to have contributed to an impasse in ceasefire and hostage-prisoner swap negotiations being held in Qatar and Egypt. The talks stalled on Saturday, Egyptian mediators told local media.
Hamas has sent conflicting messages over its future participation in the talks, which were the most promising of a series of failed negotiations since an initial ceasefire and hostage release deal brokered in November. That truce broke down after a week, following what the US said was Hamas's inability or unwillingness to release more Israeli captives.
The latest statement from Hamas's Qatar-based political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, on Sunday stressed that the group was pulling out of the indirect talks in protest at the recent Israeli 'massacres' but that the group was ready to return to the negotiation table if Israel 'demonstrates 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 be seen as halting negotiations despite the stepped-up Israeli attacks. 'Hamas wants the war to end, not at any price. It says it has shown the flexibility needed and is pushing the mediators to get Israel to reciprocate,' the official said.
The group has accused the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of seeking to derail a deal and an end to the war for his own political gain. On Tuesday, however, Israel's defence minister, Yoav Gallant, still appeared hopeful, telling the families of five female soldiers kidnapped during Hamas's 7 October attack that 'this is the closest we have ever been to a deal', according to Israel's Channel 12.
Disagreements over the identities and numbers of the Israeli hostages and Palestinians held in Israeli jails have repeatedly scuppered truce talks. The situation has been complicated by the fact that in May Israel seized control of the Rafah border crossing into Egypt, which Hamas and international delegations insist must be returned to Palestinian control.
The US state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, told reporters that two senior advisers to Netanyahu had said Israel was still committed to reaching a ceasefire. He also criticised the 'unacceptably high' civilian casualties of the last few days.
Washington, Israel's most important ally, has provided significant military and diplomatic cover for Israel's war in Gaza, despite domestic blowback.
Also on Monday, the EU added to a wave of international measures against extremist Israelis, announcing new sanctions on three well-known Israeli settler leaders in the occupied West Bank and a pro-settlement group, Regavim, which was founded by the current Israeli finance minister, the far-right Bezalel Smotrich.
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