Airstrikes Kill 40 more Monday as Ceasfire talks Begin
Repost via Reuters
Israeli airstrikes killed dozens of Palestinians on Monday as Hamas leaders visited Cairo for a new round of truce talks, with more than half the dead in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, which foreign leaders have urged Israel not to invade.
Hours after the strikes on Rafah, where almost half of Gaza’s 2.3 million population have sought refuge from months of Israeli bombardment, Egypt’s state-affiliated television said the Hamas delegation left Cairo for Doha and would return at an unspecified later date with a written response to the ceasefire proposal.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Hamas to swiftly accept what he called an “extraordinarily generous” Israeli proposal for a truce in the Gaza war and the release of Israeli hostages held by the Palestinian militant group.
U.S. President Joe Biden and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi spoke by phone to discuss developments in negotiations regarding a ceasefire in Gaza and the dangers of military escalation.
Bombs hit three houses in Rafah on Monday. And in Gaza City, in the north of the strip, Israeli warplanes struck two houses, killing at least six people and wounding several others, health officials said.
With nightfall, an Israeli air strike on a house in the Al-Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza killed three Palestinians, including a journalist, medics and Hamas media said. Six other people were killed in other central Gaza areas in separate Israeli air strikes, they added.
Israel’s military on Monday said two soldiers were killed in central Gaza on Sunday.
The armed wing of the Hamas-allied Islamic Jihad said it fired rockets into Israel on Monday, signaling the group was still able to launch rocket attacks after nearly seven months of the Israeli air and ground offensive.
Asked about the Rafah strikes, an Israeli military (IDF) spokesperson said fighter jets had “struck terror targets where terrorists were operating within a civilian area in southern Gaza,” declining to give details.
At a Rafah hospital, relatives of those killed in the strikes came to take the bodies away for burial. Women and men cried as they paid farewell to slain relatives wrapped in white and black shrouds.”His name is Deif-Allah (meaning guest in Arabic) and he was indeed a guest. He came as a guest after (his parents) longed for (him) for so long, after 10 years,” said Abu Taha, holding the body of his baby boy.
“Ten people (were killed), the mother, her daughter, her granddaughters, her grandson, her son-in-law, their daughters and relatives, everyone. They’re all gone, all 10 of them.”
2024
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