Closing summary
Hamas said in a statement on Thursday that mediators have not yet provided the group with any updates regarding Gaza ceasefire negotiations. It also accused Israel of “stalling” to gain time and thwart the current round of talks, Reuters reported. “The occupation continues its policy of stalling to buy time to foil this round of negotiations, as it has done in previous rounds,” the Islamist faction added.
An Israeli negotiation team will head on Thursday to Cairo to hold further Gaza ceasefire talks, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said. “A delegation headed by the head of the Shin Bet (domestic security service), together with representatives of the IDF (Israel Defence Forces), is scheduled to leave for Cairo this evening to continue the talks,” the statement said, adding that Netanyahu met throughout the day with negotiators who returned from Doha.
Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said he met visiting US envoy Brett McGurk on Thursday and discussed progress in reaching a Gaza hostage release deal. Gallant, according to a statement from his office, said they also spoke about “the delivery of critical munition, some of which will be sent to Israel in the coming days.”
The White House national security spokesperson John Kirby has told CNN that the United States is “cautiously optimistic” about Gaza ceasefire talks,, adding that gaps between the two sides could be narrowed, according to Reuters. When asked if a ceasefire deal was close, Kirby said: “We are cautiously optimistic that things are moving in a good direction … There are still gaps remaining between the two sides. We believe those gaps can be narrowed, and that’s what Brett McGurk and CIA Director Bill Burns are trying to do right now.”
Israeli airstrikes pounded parts of Gaza’s biggest city on Thursday, Hamas said, after Israel’s military declared an end to its operation in an eastern district that saw Gaza City’s heaviest combat in months. The upsurge in fighting, bombardment and displacement followed Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement in late June that “the war in its intense phase is about to end”.
Residents of Gaza City were trapped in houses and bodies lay uncollected in the streets under an intense new Israeli assault on Thursday, even as Washington pushed for a peace deal at talks in Egypt and Qatar. Hamas militants say a massive Israeli assault on Gaza City this week could wreck efforts to finally end the war just as negotiations have entered the home stretch, Reuters reported.
More than 38,345 Palestinians have been killed and 88,295 have been injured in the Israeli military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Thursday. Some 50 Palestinians were killed and 54 injured in the past 24 hours, the ministry added.
Israeli-made weapons designed to spray high levels of shrapnel are causing horrific injuries to civilians in Gaza and disproportionately harming children, foreign surgeons who worked in the territory in recent months have told the Guardian. The doctors say many of the deaths, amputations and life changing wounds to children they have treated came from the firing of missiles and shells – in areas crowded with civilians – packed with additional metal designed to fragment into tiny pieces of shrapnel.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels likely fired an Iranian-made anti-ship cruise missile at a Norwegian-flagged tanker in the Red Sea in December, an assault that now provides a public evidence-based link between the ongoing rebel campaign against shipping and Tehran, the US military says. A report by the US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) released on Wednesday linked the attack on the Strinda, which set the vessel ablaze, to Tehran, the Houthi’s main backer in Yemen’s nearly decade-long war.
Several drones from Lebanon fell inside Israel on Thursday, the Israeli military said, while the head of the local municipality told Israel’s Channel 12 that one person was critically injured.
Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan has said US president Joe Biden and his administration are complicit in what he called Israeli war crimes and violations of international law in the Gaza conflict, and he called for sanctions against Israel. In an interview with Newsweek during the Nato summit in Washington, Erdogan said Israel’s “brutal murder” of civilians, its strikes on hospitals, aid centres and elsewhere constituted war crimes. “The US administration, however, disregards these violations and provides Israel with the most support. They do so at the expense of being complicit in these violations,” Erdogan was quoted as saying.
Iran is still conducting indirect nuclear talks with the United States via Oman, Iran’s Etemad newspaper on Thursday quoted Iran’s acting foreign minister as saying. Ali Bagheri Kani’s reported comments followed remarks on Monday in which a White House spokesperson said the United States was not ready to resume nuclear talks with Iran under the newly elected president, Masoud Pezeshkian, Reuters reported.
The war in Gaza has contributed to a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents in Europe, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) said in a report released on Thursday. An FRA survey conducted between January and June 2023 showed antisemitism was already high in Europe before the war began in October, and information collected from 12 Jewish community organisations since then showed a further rise, the report said.
That’s all from me, Tom Ambrose, and indeed the Middle East crisis live blog for today. Thanks for following along.
