By Nidal al-Mughrabi
CAIRO (Reuters) -Israeli military strikes killed at least 36 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Sunday, most of them in the north of the enclave, Palestinian health officials said, as efforts to secure a ceasefire in the more than year-long war resumed in Qatar.
The directors of the CIA and Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency will meet with Qatar’s prime minister on Sunday in Doha, an official briefed on the talks told Reuters.
The negotiations will seek a short-term ceasefire and the release of some hostages being held by Hamas in exchange for Israel’s release of Palestinian prisoners, the official said.
The talks aim to get Israel and Hamas to agree to a halt in fighting for less than a month in the hope it would lead to a more permanent ceasefire.
There was no immediate comment from Hamas.
The U.S., Qatar and Egypt have been leading negotiations to bring an end to the war, which broke out after Hamas fighters stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7 last year, killing 1,200 and taking more than 250 hostages, by Israeli tallies.
The death toll from Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza is approaching 43,000, with the densely populated enclave in ruins.
It was not clear if Egyptian officials were also joining the talks on Sunday.
At least 34 of those killed on Sunday were in northern Gaza, where Israeli troops have returned to root out Hamas fighters who it says have regrouped there.
Twenty people were killed following an airstrike on houses in Jabalia, the largest of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps, which has been the focus of an Israeli military offensive for more than three weeks, medics and the Palestinian official news agency WAFA said.
While an Israeli air strike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinian families in Shati camp in Gaza City, killed four people and wounded 20 others, many in critical condition, medics said.
On Sunday, Israel’s military said it had “eliminated over 40 terrorists” in the Jabalia area in the past 24 hours, as well as dismantling infrastructure and locating “large quantities of military equipment”.
In addition, Israel said its forces had eliminated a “terrorist cell” during a close-quarter encounter in central Gaza.
RISING DEATH TOLL
Meanwhile, the death toll from an Israeli airstrike late on Saturday on a residential district in the nearby town of Beit Lahiya rose to 40, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA said.
The Israeli military said it had carried out “a precise strike using precise munitions on Hamas terrorists within a structure in the area of Beit Lahiya in the Gaza Strip. A number of terrorists have been hit in the strike.”
It added that the high number of casualties mentioned in the media report did not align with the type of munitions used in the precision attack.
Israeli military strikes on the towns of Jabalia, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza have so far killed around 800 people during a three-week offensive, the Gaza health ministry said.
Palestinian health officials said the ongoing Israeli aerial and ground offensive has crippled the healthcare system in northern Gaza and was blocking medical teams from reaching bombed sites.
The Civil Emergency Service announced two days ago that their operations were halted after Israel detained and wounded several of their personnel and bombed their only fire truck.
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Editing by Sharon Singleton)
