Nidal al-Mughrabi and James Mackenzie
CAIRO/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel has carried out airstrikes on dozens of Hamas targets in Gaza in the past 24 hours, it said on Friday, in strikes that Palestinian health authorities say have killed more than 110 people in two days.
The surge in operations and casualties comes amid renewed efforts to reach a ceasefire in the 15-month war and return Israeli hostages before US President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20.
Israeli mediators have been sent to resume talks in Doha with the mediation of Qatari and Egyptian mediators, and on Friday the administration of US President Joe Biden, which is helping to mediate the talks, called on Hamas to agree to the deal. Hamas said it was committed to reaching an agreement, but it was unclear how close the two sides were.
Gaza’s health ministry said more than 40 people were killed on Friday after 71 were killed a day earlier, including in Al-Mawasi, an area in central Gaza previously declared a humanitarian safe zone by Israeli authorities.
The Israeli military said it hit about 40 Hamas gathering points, as well as command and control centers. They said they had taken a number of measures to reduce the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precision munitions, aerial surveillance and other intelligence.
He accused Hamas, the Islamist movement that previously controlled Gaza, of placing fighters in civilian areas, including buildings formerly used as schools, where soldiers found a number of weapons. Hamas rejects accusations that it is deliberately using the civilian population to protect fighters.
On Friday, the army told civilians in the al-Burei area of central Gaza to evacuate ahead of an operation it ordered following rocket attacks from the area. It said residents should move to the humanitarian zone for their own safety.
Elsewhere, Israeli troops are battling Hamas fighters who have held out in towns around the northern end of the enclave for the past month and have continued to find weapons caches and underground infrastructure, the army said.
Israel launched its attack on Gaza in response to a Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, in which militants stormed border communities from Gaza, killing about 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli figures.
His military campaign, with the stated goal of rooting out Hamas, leveled parts of the enclave, driving most people from their homes and killing 45,658 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
The severe winter weather caused great difficulties for hundreds of thousands of people who took shelter in improvised tent settlements.
STALLED DIPLOMACY
The United States, Egypt and Qatar have been unsuccessfully trying to broker a cease-fire and hostage-free agreement for a year, and are making another push this month ahead of Trump’s inauguration.
Ceasefire efforts have repeatedly run into fundamental disagreement over how to end the conflict. Hamas says it will accept the deal and release the hostages only if Israel commits to ending the war. Israel says it will agree to an end to the fighting only when Hamas is destroyed.
Hamas said on Friday that it wanted a “complete ceasefire, the withdrawal of occupying forces from the Gaza Strip” and the return of the displaced to their homes in all areas of the enclave.
US President Joe Biden has repeatedly called for a cease-fire agreement. Trump said that if there is no deal to release the hostages before his inauguration, “all hell will break loose.”
The Israeli army has entered almost every part of Gaza, but is still fighting Hamas militants who are waging a guerilla war over the ruins of the tiny enclave.
During the fall, the Israeli army continued intense fighting in the northern Gaza Strip, which it repeatedly told all civilians to leave, while continuing to carry out heavy strikes in the south.
In late December, the one-day death toll reported by the Gaza health ministry included 48 on 28 December, 58 on 22 December and 77 on 20 December. The number rose by 1,124 in December, compared with 1,170 in November and 1,621 in October, according to the ministry.
The Israeli military said Thursday’s strikes targeted Hamas militants in the southern city of Khan Younis and the Mawasi camp for displaced people, which has been designated a humanitarian zone.
Asked about the death toll on Thursday, a spokesman for Israel’s military said it had followed international law in conducting the war in Gaza and had taken “feasible precautions to mitigate harm to civilians”.
