Israel-Hamas hostage deal edges closer despite fierce fighting in Gaza

The delicate hostage talks coincide with Israel preparing to expand its offensive against Hamas to Gaza’s southern half, signaled by increasing air strikes there on targets Israel sees as lairs of armed militants.

However, Israel’s main ally the United States cautioned it on Sunday not to embark on combat operations in the south until military planners have taken into account the safety of fleeing Palestinian civilians.

Gaza’s traumatized population has been on the move since the start of the war, sheltering in hospitals or trudging from the north to the south and, in some cases, back again, in desperate efforts to stay out of the line of fire.

Gaza’s Hamas-run government said at least 13,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli bombardments since then, including at least 5,500 children.

The civilian death toll in Gaza was “staggering and unacceptable”, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on Sunday, again appealing for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.

Witnesses reported heavy fighting overnight on Sunday between Hamas gunmen and Israeli forces trying to advance into Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s camps with nearly 100,000 people.

Jabalia, a poor and crowded district that grew out of a camp for Palestinian refugees from the 1948 Israeli-Arab war, has come under repeated Israeli bombardment that has killed scores of civilians, Palestinian medics say. Israel says the strikes have killed many militants dug into the area.

Via social media in Arabic, Israel’s military on Sunday urged residents of several Jabalia neighborhoods to evacuate towards south Gaza “to preserve your safety” and to that end said it would pause military action from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

After the “pause” period expired, 11 Palestinians in Jabalia were killed by an Israeli air strike on a house, the enclave’s health ministry said.

The south has also been repeatedly bombarded by Israel, rendering Israeli promises of safety absurd, say Palestinians.

Around 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, were killed in Hamas’s shock Oct. 7 assault, according to Israeli tallies, the deadliest day in the country’s 75-year history.

In the center of the narrow coastal enclave, Palestinian medics said 31 people were killed, including two local journalists, in Israeli air strikes targeting a number of houses in the Bureij and Nusseirat refugee camps late on Saturday. Another air strike killed a woman and her child overnight in the main southern city of Khan Younis, they said.

In Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, dozens of Palestinians marched to a funeral for 15 residents killed in an Israeli strike on an apartment block on Saturday.

“Our youth are dying, women and children are dying, where are the Arab presidents?” wailed Heydaya Asfour, a relative of some of the dead.

The Israeli army says Hamas uses residential and other civilian buildings as cover for command centers, weapons caches, rocket launchpads and a vast underground tunnel network. The Islamist movement denies using human shields to wage war.

Hamas’s armed wing, the Al Qassam Brigades, said militants killed six soldiers at close range in the village of Juhr al-Dik, just east of Gaza City, after ambushing them with an anti-personnel missile and closing in with machine guns.

A total of 64 Israeli soldiers have died in the conflict, according to the latest army count.

A team led by the World Health Organization that visited Al Shifa, Gaza’s biggest hospital, described it as a “death zone,” days after advancing Israeli forces seized the premises to root out an alleged underground Hamas command center.

The WHO team reported signs of gunfire and shelling and a mass grave at Al Shifa’s entrance and said it was making plans for the immediate evacuation of 291 remaining patients, including the war-wounded, and 25 staff.

On Sunday, 31 premature babies were evacuated from Al Shifa in a joint operation by the U.N. and Palestinian Red Crescent and will be taken over the southern Rafah border crossing to Egypt for hospitalization there, Gaza’s health ministry said.

Eight premature babies previously died at Al Shifa for lack of electricity and medication crucial to care, it said.

Hundreds of other patients, staff and displaced people who were sheltering in Al Shifa left on Saturday, with Palestinian health officials saying they were ejected inhumanely by Israeli troops and the military saying the departures were voluntary.