GAZA: Israeli attacks across Gaza have killed 47 Palestinians since dawn, Al Jazeera reports citing medical sources.
Among them are 27 people killed in strikes on central and southern Gaza.
Israel’s military offensive on Gaza has killed at least 58,026 people and wounded 138,520, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Latest Israeli air strikes have killed at least 22 people, including at least 10 in Gaza City, AFP reports citing Gaza’s civil defence agency.
Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that 10 Palestinians were killed in three separate air strikes in various parts of Gaza City, in the territory’s north, with 12 more people killed in attacks on the southern area of Khan Younis.
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military said it was looking into the reports. A military statement said that Israeli troops had destroyed “buildings and terrorist infrastructure” used by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants in Gaza City’s Shujaiya and Zeitun areas.
The Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, which has fought alongside Hamas in Gaza, released footage that it said showed its fighters firing missiles at an Israeli army command and control centre near Shujaiya.
Gaza’s water crisis has intensified since Israel blocked nearly all fuel shipments into the enclave on March 2. With no fuel, desalination plants, wastewater treatment facilities and pumping stations have largely shut down, Al Jazeera reports.
Asem Alnabih, a spokesperson for Gaza’s municipality, said yesterday that only 12 of more than 70 municipal wells remain operational.
“We’re on the verge of death. Water can reach only 50 per cent of the city,” Alnabih told Al Jazeera, adding that the rest get nothing.
According to the International Rescue Committee, most people in Gaza now receive far less than the World Health Organisation’s emergency minimum of 15 litres per person per day.
Mediators are pursuing “innovative mechanisms” to bridge the gaps between Israeli and Hamas delegations after a week of Gaza truce talks in Qatar, an official with knowledge of the negotiations has told AFP.
“Mediators are actively exploring innovative mechanisms to help bridge the remaining gaps and maintain momentum in the negotiations,” the official said, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
Hamas has accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of not wanting to reach a deal to end the fighting in Gaza as talks in Qatar enter their second week, AFP reports.
“Netanyahu is skilled at thwarting one round of negotiations after another, and is unwilling to reach any agreement,” the Palestinian group said in a statement on its Telegram channel.
Meanwhile, the father of an Israeli captive held in Gaza says he had travelled to Washington DC with “hope” of a ceasefire but has returned to Israel to a “reality of stagnation that is difficult to bear”, Al Jazeera reports.
Kobi Kalfon, father of Segev Kalfon, told Israeli public radio that he and the other family members of captives were in a “race against time” as their loved ones remained in captivity.
“At the timing we are going through, you expect a breakthrough. Last week, we were in Washington, and I clung to a certain hope. Then we returned to the country, and the negotiations are stuck,” Kobi Kalfon said.
He added that in the US, the “feeling” was that a ceasefire was about to be reached.
“When is it supposed to happen?” he asked.
