Closing summary
Six months on from the start of the war, negotiators are reportedly meeting in Cairo to try to reach a ceasefire deal, which has so far remained elusive despite several high-level attempts. According to some media reports, CIA director Bill Burns and Qatari prime minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani will join negotiators from Egypt, Israel and Hamas. Despite speculation they would not be present, an Israeli government official said on Sunday that an Israeli delegation will take part in the latest round of negotiations in the Egyptian capital. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Sunday, however, that Israel would not agree to a ceasefire with Hamas until the hostages being held in Gaza are released. At the same cabinet meeting, Netanyahu, under intense pressure from the families of hostages still being held captive in Gaza, was quoted as saying: “We are one step away from victory… But the price we paid is painful and heartbreaking.”
A senior Iranian official said on Sunday that none of Israel’s embassies were safe any more, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported. Yahya Rahim Safavi, a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, was quoted as saying that Tehran viewed confrontation with Israel as a “legitimate and legal right”. He was speaking after a suspected Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus on 1 April for which Tehran has vowed retaliation. Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said earlier today that preparations had been completed to handle any scenario that may develop with Iran. The minister’s office made the statement after he held an “operational situation assessment” with senior military officers.
World Central Kitchen founder, José Andrés, has raised questions over the Israeli probe into an Israeli strike that killed seven of his staff in Gaza, and warned that Israel’s war in Gaza had become a “war against humanity itself”. “This doesn’t seem like a war against terror. This doesn’t seem any more like a war about defending Israel,” he said. “This really, at this point, seems like a war against humanity itself.”
At least 33,175 Palestinian people have been killed and 75,886 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said. There have been 38 Palestinians killed and 71 injured in the past 24 hours, the ministry said. UN agencies and charities decried the devastating humanitarian impact of Gaza’s war, warning that the situation was “beyond catastrophic” with a faming looming and millions of people at risk of hunger.
The Israeli military has withdrawn all ground troops from the southern Gaza Strip except for one brigade, a military spokesperson said. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said a “significant force” will continue to operate in the rest of Gaza. “They’ve been on the ground for four months, the word we’re getting is they’re tired, they need to be refit,” US national security council spokesperson John Kirby told ABC’s This Week programme, though he stressed that it was “hard to know exactly what this tells us right now”.
We are closing this blog now, but you can stay up to date on the Guardian’s Middle East coverage here.
Updated
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels on Sunday said they targeted a “British ship” and two “Israeli” vessels, after a British maritime security firm reported three separate attacks off Yemen’s coast in less than 24 hours.
In a statement posted on social media on Sunday, Huthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said the rebels carried out five military operations during the previous 72 hours.
They include a missile strike against a “British ship (Hope Island) in the Red Sea”.
Missiles also targeted what Saree described as two Israeli ships, MSC GRACE F and MSC GINA.
