Israeli airstrikes kill 38 Palestinians as negotiation team heads to Qatar

Israeli airstrikes killed at least 38 Palestinians in Gaza, hospital officials said on Sunday, as Israel sent a ceasefire negotiating team to Qatar ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's White House visit for talks toward a deal.

 

US President Donald Trump, who will meet with Netanyahu on Monday, has floated a plan for an initial 60-day ceasefire that would include a partial release of hostages held by Hamas in exchange for an increase in humanitarian supplies allowed into Gaza. The proposed truce calls for talks on ending the 21-month war altogether.

 

“There are 20 hostages that are alive, 30 dead. I am determined, we are determined, to bring them all back. And we will also be determined to ensure that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel,” Netanyahu said before departing, emphasizing the goal of eliminating Hamas' military and governing power.

 

Israel approves aid to northern Gaza, official says Separately, an Israeli official said the security Cabinet late Saturday approved sending aid into northern Gaza, where civilians suffer from acute food shortages. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the decision with the media, declined to give more details.

 

Northern Gaza has seen just a trickle of aid enter since Israel ended the latest ceasefire in March. The Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation's closest aid distribution site is near the Netzarim corridor south of Gaza City that separates the territory's north and south.

 

In Yemen, a spokesperson for the Iran-backed Houthi rebels announced in a prerecorded message that the group had launched ballistic missiles targeting Israel's Ben Gurion Airport overnight. Israel's military said they were intercepted.

 

Israel hits 130 targets across Gaza

 

Israeli strikes hit two houses in Gaza City, killing 20 Palestinians and wounding 25 others, according to Mohammed Abu Selmia, director of Shifa Hospital, which serves the area. 

In southern Gaza, Israeli strikes killed 18 Palestinians in Muwasi, an area on the Mediterranean coast where thousands of displaced people live in tents, officials at Nasser Hospital in the nearby city of Khan Younis told The Associated Press. It said two families were among the dead.

 

“My brother, his wife, his four children, my cousin's son and his daughter. ... Eight people are gone,” said Saqer Abu Al-Kheir as people gathered on the sand for prayers and burials.

 

Israel's military had no immediate comment on the individual strikes but said it struck 130 targets across Gaza in the past 24 hours. It claimed its strikes targeted Hamas command and control structures, storage facilities, weapons and launchers, and that they killed a number of militants in northern Gaza.

 

Rift over ending the war

 

Ahead of the indirect talks with Hamas in Qatar, Netanyahu's office asserted that the militant group was seeking “unacceptable” changes to the ceasefire proposal.

 

Hamas, which gave a “positive” response late Friday to the latest US proposal, has sought guarantees that the initial truce would lead to a total end to the war and withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. Previous negotiations have stalled over Hamas demands of guarantees that further negotiations would lead to the war's end, while Netanyahu has insisted Israel would resume fighting to ensure the group's destruction.

 

The war began when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 others hostage. Most have been released in earlier ceasefires. Israel responded with an offensive that has killed over 57,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.

 

The ministry, which is under Gaza's Hamas government, does not differentiate between civilians and combatants. The UN and other international organisations see its figures as the most reliable statistics on war casualties.