45 killed as Israel targets Gaza refugee camp, school; 800 dead in three weeks

Israeli military strikes killed at least 45 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 said.

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 but a Palestinian official close to the mediation effort said: “I expect Hamas would listen to the new offers, but it remains determined that any agreement must end the war and get Israeli forces out of Gaza.”

The United States, 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 October 7 last year, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, by Israeli tallies.

The death toll from Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza is approaching 43,000, Gaza health officials say, with the densely populated enclave in ruins. It was not clear if Egyptian officials were also joining the talks on Sunday.

At least 43 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. An Israeli airstrike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinian families in Shati camp in Gaza City, killed nine people and wounded 20 others, with many in critical condition, medics said.

Three local journalists were among those killed at the school in Shati — Saed Radwan, head of digital media at Hamas Al-Aqsa television, Hanin Baroud, and Hamza Abu Selmeya, according to Hamas media. This raised the number of Palestinian journalists killed by Israeli fire since October 7, 2023 to 180.

On Sunday, Israel’s military said it had killed more than 40 militants 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 militant cell in a clash in central Gaza. 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 WAFA said.

Israeli military strikes on the towns of Jabalia, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya in Gaza have so far killed around 800 people in three weeks.