Closing summary
Negotiations aimed at brokering a ceasefire in Israel’s war in Gaza appear to have stalled, days before an unofficial deadline of the beginning of Ramadan. Hamas negotiators stayed in Cairo for a third day of ceasefire talks on Tuesday after two days yielded no breakthrough. Two days of talks between Hamas and international mediators broke up in the Egyptian capital without any significant breakthroughs, Palestinian officials said, after Israel declined to send a delegation to the latest round of negotiations. But leaders from Hamas were reportedly expected to hold more talks in Cairo with Egyptian and Qatari mediators over the prospects of reaching a ceasefire deal.
Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, has said the continuing tension with Hezbollah militants at the border with Lebanon was moving the situation nearer to a military escalation, Reuters reported. “We are committed to the diplomatic process, however Hezbollah’s aggression is bringing us closer to a critical point in the decision-making regarding our military activities in Lebanon,” he said in a statement after a meeting with US special envoy Amos Hochstein.
NBC News has been told by US officials that Kamala Harris’ speech on Sunday, in which the US vice-president called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and urged Hamas to accept a deal to release hostages in return for a six-week cessation of hostilities, was watered down by officials at the national security council.
At least 30,631 Palestinians have been killed and 72,043 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said. An estimated 97 Palestinian people were killed and 123 injured in the past 24 hours, the ministry added.
Children are dying of starvation in northern Gaza, the World Health Organization (WHO) chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has said. In a post on X, he said the organisation’s visits over the weekend to the al-Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals, in northern Gaza, were the first since early October, and produced “grim findings”. The WHO chief described severe levels of malnutrition, children dying of starvation and serious shortages of fuel, food and medical supplies at the health facilities. Adding to concerns about the widespread malnutrition in the enclave, Richard Peeperkorn, WHO representative for Gaza and the West Bank, said on Tuesday that “the situation is particularly extreme in northern Gaza”. He said that 1 in 6 children under two years of age were acutely malnourished in northern Gaza. “With children starting … to die from starvation, that should be an alarm like no other,” Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN humanitarian agency, told reporters in Geneva, separately.
Discussions about how humanitarian aid could enter Gaza without Israeli permisson are to be discussed at an emergency meeting of the Organisation of Islamic cooperation in Jeddah on Tuesday.
The OIC comprises 75 Muslim member states and Turkey and Iran intend to use the meeting to press a tougher practical line with Israel than the Gulf States. Some consumer boycotts have damaged US firms in the Middle East such as Starbucks, but many countries have been continuing to trade with Israel despite accusing the country of genocide.
Ahead of the meeting, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kan’ani had described the meeting as a test for the OIC. “This cruel war continues in the shadow of warmongering by the Zionist regime’s officials and the unlimited support of the United States. The OIC is facing a test tomorrow to show how much of its capacity it will use in support of Palestine.” Iran’s foreign minister, Amir Abdullahian, has in the past pressed the OIC to mount sanctions and boycotts of Israel.
Foreign ministers of the OIC last met five months ago to discuss the crisis while leaders met four months ago. Iran argues the 20 point plan agreed by the leaders has led to no effective pressure on Israel, and despite fiery rhetoric some Gulf states continue to trade with Israel, and export energy to a country they denounce as genocidal.
Speaking on Sunday, Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, hinted that Turkey could send humanitarian aid to Gaza without seeking Israeli permission.
Citing his conversations with his foreign counterparts on the sidelines of the Antalya Diplomacy Forum over the weekend, Fidan said some countries were advocating to act unilaterally, departing from the established practice of seeking Israeli permission in aid dispatches.
“We also support this view,” he said. “Delivering aid to Gaza while waiting for someone now means being complicit in the slow and silent deaths of more than 2 million people,” he added.
The Turkish Red Crescent delivered more than 3,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Gaza since the 7 October Hamas attacks, and is sending another 3,000 tonnes by ship shortly to Egypt.
Fidan did not name the countries that are considering by-passing Israel but such a unilateral action if it involved land convoys would require a green light from Egypt, or Jordan. Egyptian officials held talks on Monday with Sigrid Kaag, the UN’s under-secretary-general and senior coordinator for humanitarian affairs and reconstruction in Gaza.
Humanitarian aid to Gaza is now being delivered via the Rafah crossing linking the Palestinian enclave and Egypt, and at the Kerem Shalom crossing.
On Tuesday, the Jordanian Armed Forces carried out 8 joint airdrops, the largest since the start of the air operations.
The Jordanian army said the operations included three C130 aircraft belonging to the Royal Jordanian air force, three American aircraft, an Egyptian aircraft, and a French aircraft.
Jordan says it has now conducted 28 airdrop missions including 15 in conjunction with others.
In a policy switch, the US swung behind emergency air aid drops last week, but critics say the amount of aid that can be delivered by air is strictly limited. The head of US AID agency Samantha Power has stressed aid airdrops are not a substitute but a supplement to a larger number of trucks entering Gaza.
Jordan says it is not required to coordinate with Israel over the contents of its aid drops.
Israeli aid authorities said on 3 March the number of aid trucks entering Gaza reached a record with 277 trucks inspected and transferred to Gaza, the largest number since the start of the war.
The discussions about aid at the OIC alos came as the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan met the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for talks.
Before the 7 October attacks, Erdogan had hosted a rare meeting between Abbas and Hamas political head Ismail Haniyeh in a bid to create unity between the two factions, but the Gaza war brought this diplomacy to a halt.
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Israel says it is interested only in a temporary truce during which more hostages would be freed, Reuters reports. Hamas says it wants any deal to lead to a permanent end to hostilities.
The Egyptian security sources said US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators were seeking to overcome this difference by offering separate guarantees to Hamas of peace talks to end the war.
The sides also need to resolve a Hamas demand for all Gaza residents to be allowed to return to abandoned homes during the truce, as well as Israel’s demand for the list of hostages, the Egyptian sources said.
Two days of talks between Hamas and international mediators have broken up in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, without any significant breakthroughs, Palestinian officials said, after Israel declined to send a delegation to the latest round of negotiations.
UN: Gaza’s starving children should be 'an alarm like no other'
The UN has called on the international community to “flood” Gaza with aid amid reports that children are dying of starvation in the enclave.
“With children starting … to die from starvation, that should be an alarm like no other,” Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN humanitarian agency, told reporters in Geneva.
The Gaza health ministry has said up to 15 children have died from starvation and dehydration.
The World Health Organization reported “grim” findings and scenes of starving children after reaching two northern hospitals with aid last weekend for the first time since October (see earlier post at 08.20 for more details).
Israel’s war in Gaza has displaced the vast majority of the population from their homes and left civilians facing acute shortages of food, water and medicine in cold and wet conditions.
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American cargo planes airdropped more than 36,000 meals to Gaza on Tuesday in a joint operation with Jordan, the US military said.
The UN has warned of famine in Gaza, while the World Health Organization said a recent aid mission to two hospitals found horrifying scenes of children dying of starvation in the territory’s north.
“US Central Command and the Royal Jordanian air force conducted a combined humanitarian assistance airdrop into Northern Gaza on 5 March 2024, at 2:30 p.m. (Gaza time) to provide essential relief to civilians affected by the ongoing conflict,” the military command said in a statement.
“US C-130s dropped over 36,800 US and Jordanian meal equivalents in Northern Gaza, an area of great need, allowing for civilian access to the critical aid,” CENTCOM said, adding that “we continue planning for follow-on aid delivery missions.” The US began airdropping aid on Saturday into Gaza.
UN experts have condemned the violence unleashed by Israeli forces on Palestinians gathered in Gaza City to collect flour last week as a “massacre”.
In a statement released on Tuesday, a group of UN special rapporteurs accused Israel of “intentionally starving the Palestinian people in Gaza since 8 October. Now it is targeting civilians seeking humanitarian aid and humanitarian convoys.”
“Israel must end its campaign of starvation and targeting of civilians,” said the UN experts, who warned that there was mounting evidence of famine in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli troops reportedly fired on crowds of desperate Palestinians gathered to collect flour on 29 February, killing at least 112 people and injuring about 760. “The attack came after Israel has denied humanitarian aid into Gaza City and northern Gaza for more than a month,” the experts said.
The experts claimed there have been at least 14 similar incidents of shooting, shelling and targeting Palestinians gathered to receive humanitarian aid from trucks or airdrops between mid-January and the end of February 2024.
Since the start of the conflict Israel has been accused of targeting Palestinian food sources and agriculture – bakeries, orchards and greenhouses – as well as blocking humanitarian supplies.
At least 15 children have reportedly died from malnutrition at just one hospital, Kamal Adwan, in Gaza City. In January, one in six infants (children under two) in northern Gaza were found to be acutely malnourished which leads to wasting.
“When children start dying like this, you know that famine is probably already happening or just around the corner. We are alarmed to see an entire civilian population suffering such unprecedented starvation, so quickly and completely,” they said. “We have been saying for months that widespread famine is imminent in Gaza.”
Israeli defence minister says Hezbollah aggression bringing 'critical point' nearer
Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, has said the continuing tension with Hezbollah militants at the border with Lebanon was moving the situation nearer to a military escalation, Reuters reports.
“We are committed to the diplomatic process, however Hezbollah’s aggression is bringing us closer to a critical point in the decision-making regarding our military activities in Lebanon,” he said in a statement after a meeting with US special envoy Amos Hochstein.
Hezbollah and the Israeli army have been trading fire since the Hamas 7 October attacks on Israel, in which, according to Israeli figures, about 1,200 people were killed and another 250 abducted.
The exchanges have become gradually more serious, displacing tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border.
As the scope of the confrontation has spread ever wider, Israel has pursued a campaign of targeted assassinations, killing a senior Hamas official in a Beirut suburb and a number of senior Hezbollah commanders.
Both sides have said they do not seek all-out war, and the conflict has largely been contained in areas near the boundary.
The Italian foreign minister has again called for a “sustainable ceasefire” in Gaza, Al Jazeera reports.
“Italy calls for an extended and enduring cessation of hostilities, leading to a sustainable ceasefire as prescribed also by UN security council Resolutions 2712 and 2720”, foreign minister Antonio Tajani was quoted as saying in front of the Italian parliament.
“The slaughter of innocents seeking food commands to intensify efforts to reach a ceasefire as soon as possible.”
“We have asked Israel to rigorously ascertain the facts and the responsibilities,” the foreign minister added.
Here are some of the latest images sent to us over the news wires from inside Gaza.
Reuters has a little more on the decision that Hamas officials will continue talks in Cairo. The news agency reports that a Hamas official told it “The delegation will remain in Cairo on Tuesday for more talks, they are expected to wrap up this round later today.”
It added that Egypt’s Qahera television also reported the talks had been extended for a third day, but said they were “facing difficulties”.
Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that overnight 22 Palestinians have been detained by Israeli security forces inside the Israeli-occupied West Bank. It states that the total number detained by Israel since 7 October has now risen to more than 7,422 people.
Hamas expected to stay in Cairo for more ceasefire talks with mediators
Leaders from Hamas were expected to hold more talks in Cairo with Egyptian and Qatari mediators over the prospects of reaching a ceasefire deal, Reuters reports a Hamas official said on Tuesday.
Belgium has sent a military transport plane to join an international operation, involving the US, France and Jordan, to drop aid in Gaza, officials said.
The aid was taken to Jordan, where Jordanian officials were to inspect it before seeking Israeli approval for an airdrop, which was to take place on Wednesday at the earliest, according to the Belgian defence ministry.
“We are not deciding when we go in. We are being told when we can go in and we will abide by that,” said Col Bruno Beeckmans, the commander of the airbase outside Brussels from where the aircraft took off.
“It’s absolutely a no-go fly zone because it’s a war zone. So we need to be precisely coordinated,” he told AFP.
Updated
Summary of the day so far...
Ceasefire talks between Hamas and mediators broke up on Tuesday in Cairo with no breakthrough, with just days left to halt fighting in time for the start of Ramadan. Senior Hamas official Bassem Naim told Reuters the Palestinian militant group presented its proposal for a ceasefire agreement to the mediators during two days of talks, and was waiting for a response from the Israelis, who stayed away from this round. “(Prime minister Benjamin) Netanyahu doesn’t want to reach an agreement and the ball now is in the Americans’ court” to press him for a deal, Naim was quoted as saying. Israeli media reported that the country’s negotiating team boycotted the talks after Hamas did not provide a list of living hostages.
NBC News has been told by US officials that Kamala Harris’ speech on Sunday, in which the US vice-president called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and urged Hamas to accept a deal to release hostages in return for a six-week cessation of hostilities, was watered down by officials at the national security council.
At least 30,631 Palestinians have been killed and 72,043 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said. An estimated 97 Palestinian people were killed and 123 injured in the past 24 hours, the ministry added.
Children are dying of starvation in northern Gaza, the World Health Organization (WHO) chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has said. In a post on X, he said the organisation’s visits over the weekend to the al-Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals, in northern Gaza, were the first since early October, and produced “grim findings”. The WHO chief described severe levels of malnutrition, children dying of starvation and serious shortages of fuel, food and medical supplies at the health facilities. Adding to concerns about the widespread malnutrition in the enclave, Richard Peeperkorn, WHO representative for Gaza and the West Bank, said on Tuesday that “the situation is particularly extreme in northern Gaza”. He said that 1 in 6 children under two years of age were acutely malnourished in northern Gaza.
Updated
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has said that since 7 October, Israeli occupation forces have committed “427 violations” against its medical missions in the occupied West Bank. It has previously said Israeli forces have arrested some of its members.
⭕️Israeli occupation forces continues its violations of the IHL, which urges them to respect the Red Crescent emblem, and facilitate the humanitarian mission of the medical teams.#ihl#prcs#notatarget ❌ pic.twitter.com/OxpwJAq48L
— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) March 5, 2024
On Sunday, the PRCS said that the Israeli military was continuing its “siege and targeting” of the al-Amal hospital in Khan Younis for the 42nd consecutive day.
The PRCS said the occupation had led to a “catastrophic deterioration” in conditions at the site, with food supplies and drinking water quickly dwindling.
Salim Oweis, the regional spokesperson for Unicef, has told Al Jazeera that Israel’s war in Gaza is exacting the heaviest toll on children living there.
Oweis said:
We need urgent international action, and what is happening in Gaza is a test of human conscience.
The lack of aid reaching the north worsens the health situation of children.
The comments come after Gaza’s health ministry saying on Sunday that 15 children had died of malnutrition or dehydration at Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza, the part of the enclave where the lack of food is most extreme.
Deliveries of food aid to the whole of Gaza are falling far short of what is needed, and the problem is worse in the north because the only crossings where Israel allows trucks to pass are in the south.
Administration officials diluted Kamala Harris' Gaza speech – report
NBC News has been told by US officials that Kamala Harris’ speech on Sunday, in which the US vice-president called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and urged Hamas to accept a deal to release hostages in return for a 6-week cessation of hostilities, was watered down by officials at the national security council.
Harris bluntly called out Israel for not doing enough to ease a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza, in what appeared to be the sharpest rebuke yet by a senior leader in the US government over the conditions in the coastal enclave.
The original draft of Harris’ speech, when it was sent to the national security council for review, was harsher on Israel about the dire humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and the need for more aid than were the remarks she ultimately delivered, according to one of the current officials and the former official.
One of the U.S. officials said the initial draft specifically called out Israel more directly about the need to immediately allow additional aid trucks in. The official described Harris’ original language as strong but not controversial.
The move to soften Harris’ comments highlights how reluctant the White House still is to aggressively criticise Israel in public as President Joe Biden tries to maintain some influence over the Israeli government and secure a hostage deal.
The current officials said that the changes were tonal, rather than shifts in policy, and that Harris’ comments about a ceasefire – which were widely covered – reiterated Biden’s remarks two days earlier and the administration’s position on the war.
Asked about reports that the speech Sunday was watered down and made to be less aggressive, Kirsten Allen, Harris’ communications director, said, “That is inaccurate.”
Updated
'Extreme' malnutrition in northern Gaza, WHO warns
The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that malnutrition in northern Gaza is “particularly extreme”.
“The situation is particularly extreme in northern Gaza,” Richard Peeperkorn, WHO representative for Gaza and the West Bank, said.
He said that 1 in 6 children under two years of age were acutely malnourished in northern Gaza.
“This was in January. So the situation is likely to be greater today,” Peeperkorn added.
Israel’s war in Gaza has displaced 85% of the population from their homes and left civilians facing acute shortages of food, water and medicine in cold and wet conditions.
Turkish police detained seven people, including a private detective, suspected of selling information to Israel’s Mossad intelligence service, Turkey’s intelligence agency has said.
The detective, who was a former public servant, was suspected of gathering information on Middle Eastern companies and individuals in Turkey, placing tracking devices and engaging in surveillance, according to the MIT intelligence agency.
“We will never allow espionage activities to be carried out within the borders of our country. We will catch them one by one and bring them to justice,” Ali Yerlikaya, Turkey’s interior minister, wrote on X. Israel did not immediately comment on the operation.
The Turkish detective was trained by the Mossad in the Serbian capital Belgrade and received payments in cryptocurrency that did not appear in official records, MIT said.
A Turkish court in January ordered the arrest of 15 people and the deportation of eight others suspected of having links to the Mossad and targeting Palestinians living in Turkey, according to Reuters.
In February, Turkey detained seven suspected of selling information to the Mossad.
Turkey, which has been highly critical of Israel’s war in Gaza, has warned Israel of “serious consequences” if it tries to hunt down Hamas members living outside the Palestinian territories, including in Turkey.
India’s embassy in Israel has advised its nationals working in Israeli border areas to move to safer parts of the country, Reuters reports.
The advisory comes a day after an anti-tank missile attack near Israel’s border with Lebanon killed one foreign worker and seriously wounded two Indians.
Gaza ceasefire talks end with no breakthrough – report
Ceasefire talks between Hamas and mediators broke up on Tuesday in Cairo with no breakthrough, with just days left to halt fighting in time for the start of Ramadan.
Senior Hamas official Bassem Naim told Reuters the Palestinian militant group presented its proposal for a ceasefire agreement to the mediators during two days of talks, and was waiting for a response from the Israelis, who stayed away from this round.
“(Prime minister Benjamin) Netanyahu doesn’t want to reach an agreement and the ball now is in the Americans’ court” to press him for a deal, Naim was quoted as saying.
Israel has declined to comment publicly on the talks in Cairo.
But officials have said Israel has not sent a delegation to the talks as they are demanding that Hamas present a list of 40 elderly, sick and female hostages who would be the first to be released as part of a truce that would initially last six weeks.
Hamas is meanwhile demanding that large-scale humanitarian aid should be allowed into Gaza and that Palestinians displaced from their homes in the north of the coastal strip should be allowed to return.
Updated
Death toll in Gaza reaches 30,631, says health ministry
At least 30,631 Palestinians have been killed and 72,043 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
An estimated 97 Palestinian people were killed and 123 injured in the past 24 hours, the ministry added.
Most of the casualties have been women and children, the ministry has said, and thousands more bodies are likely to remain uncounted under rubble across Gaza.
Norway’s UN ambassador has said her country will continue sending aid to UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA) and urged other countries to follow their lead.
A month ago, Israel accused a dozen UN staff of involvement in the 7 October Hamas attack, evidence of which has yet to be provided to investigators, prompting 16 major donors to suspend contributions of $450m while two million Palestinians face famine. The UNRWA has said it is approaching “breaking point”.
Norwegian representative Merete Fjeld Brattested on Monday told an informal meeting of the plenary to hear a UNRWA briefing in New York:
Norway has decided to continue its funding. The needs of millions of people cannot be set aside because of the alleged participation of a small number of UNRWA-staff in the 7 October attacks.
Encouraging others to reconsider their position, she added: “Norway urges other donors to reflect on the wider consequences of suspending funding to UNRWA in this time of extreme humanitarian distress.”
WHO chief: children are dying of starvation in Gaza
Children are dying of starvation in northern Gaza, the World Health Organization (WHO) chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said.
In a post on X, he said the organisation’s visits over the weekend to the al-Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals, in northern Gaza, were the first since early October, and produced “grim findings”.
The WHO chief described severe levels of malnutrition, children dying of starvation and serious shortages of fuel, food and medical supplies at the health facilities.
“The situation at al-Awda hospital is particularly appalling, as one of the buildings is destroyed,” he wrote.
“Kamal Adwan hospital is the only paediatrics hospital in the north of Gaza, and is overwhelmed with patients.
“The lack of food resulted in the deaths of 10 children. The lack of electricity poses a serious threat to patient care, especially in critical areas like the intensive care unit and the neonatal unit.”
Grim findings during @WHO visits to Al-Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals in northern #Gaza: severe levels of malnutrition, children dying of starvation, serious shortages of fuel, food and medical supplies, hospital buildings destroyed.
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) March 4, 2024
The visits over the weekend were the first… pic.twitter.com/CxaCuau7iR
Hunger and severe malnutrition are widespread in the Gaza Strip, where more than 2 million Palestinians are facing severe shortages resulting from Israel destroying food supplies and severely restricting the flow of food, medicines and other humanitarian supplies.
Updated
Israel should “cooperate fully with UN investigators” and “provide all available evidence” for its allegations that United Nations staff were involved in the 7 October terrorist attacks, Australia’s ambassador has urged, saying the government wants to resume funding to the agency providing aid in Gaza.
The overnight intervention at the UN comes as the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, shrugged off an Australian law firm’s request for the international criminal court to consider investigating him for alleged complicity to genocide over Israel’s actions in Gaza. Albanese claimed the request from Birchgrove Legal “has no credibility”, dismissing its calls to probe government actions including pausing funding to UNRWA.
James Larsen, Australia’s ambassador and permanent representative to the UN, told the body on Monday that Australia “remains deeply concerned” by Israel’s allegations that members of UNRWA – the UN Relief and Works Agency which provides aid to Palestinian refugees – were involved in the Hamas terrorist attack which killed 1,200 Israelis.
You can read the full story by my colleague, Josh Butler, here:
US Central Command (Centcom) said that Houthi rebels damaged the container vessel – M/V MSC SKY II – in the Gulf of Aden with an anti-ship ballistic missile.
“Initial reports indicate there were no injuries; the ship did not request assistance and continued on its way,” Centcom added in a statement released on Tuesday.
The Houthi rebels have made repeated drone and missile strikes since November in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait. American and British forces have responded with multiple strikes on Houthi facilities but have so far failed to halt the attacks.
The Iran-backed Houthis who control much of north-western Yemen have been attacking merchant vessels in the region since November.
The rebel group says it is targeting Israel and its western allies in support of Palestinians in Gaza.
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Opening summary
Welcome to our latest live coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza and wider Middle East crisis.
Palestinians detained by Israeli forces are coming back “completely traumatised” and reporting abuses while in captivity, the head of the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency has said.
Detainees reported being subjected to a “broad range of ill treatment” including threats of electrocution, being photographed naked, sleep deprivation and having dogs used to intimidate them, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini told a media briefing.
Lazzarini’s comments came on the same day that Israel accused UNRWA of having employed more than 450 “terrorists”.
Here’s a summary of the day’s other main events:
The UN’s special envoy on sexual violence in conflict has reported “clear and convincing information” that some women and children hostages held by Hamas have been subjected to rape and sexualised torture. The special envoy, Pramila Patten, also reported that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe sexual assaults, including rape and gang-rape, took place during the 7 October attacks by Hamas.
Egyptian and Qatari officials are putting pressure on Hamas negotiators in Cairo to produce a list of hostages to be released as the first step in a phased ceasefire agreement with Israel, according to officials familiar with the talks. International mediators and Hamas delegates were in Cairo on Tuesday for talks to try to secure a pause in the war ahead of Ramadan early next week.
Envoys from Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, and the US were expected to meet with Qatari and Egyptian mediators for a third day of negotiations over a six-week truce, the exchange of dozens of remaining hostages for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and the flow of aid to Gaza. Israeli delegates have so far stayed away from the negotiations, with Israeli media reporting that the country’s mediators boycotted the talks after Hamas failed to provide a list of living hostages.
A 16-year-old boy has been shot and killed by Israeli security forces during an overnight raid in the al-Amari camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, according to reports. Palestinian news agency Wafa also reports that 55 Palestinians were detained overnight by Israeli security forces. The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society states that about 7,400 Palestinians have now been detained by Israel since 7 October.
Israel has stepped up its allegations against the UN relief agency for Palestinians (UNRWA), saying that the organisation in Gaza had employed more than 450 “military operatives” from Hamas and other armed groups, and that Israel had shared this intelligence with the UN.
The head of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, has told the UN general assembly that the agency is “facing a deliberate and concerted campaign to undermine its operations, and ultimately end them.” UNRWA officials told the Agence France Presse new agency that some its staff had alleged they had been forced to make confessions under “torture and ill-treatment” while being interrogated over the 7 October attack.
The deaths of more than 100 people when Israeli forces opened fire near an aid convoy in Gaza was a tragedy that should have been foreseen and could have been prevented, the World Food Programme director for Gaza has said. Matthew Hollingworth also said an aid corridor into northern Gaza was needed urgently to prevent a “man-made” famine there after Palestinians were starved of food at terrifying speed and scale.
Ships will have to obtain a permit from Yemen’s Houthi-controlled Maritime Affairs Authority before entering Yemeni waters, Houthi telecommunications minister Misfer Al-Numair said on Monday. Houthi militants have repeatedly launched drones and missiles against international commercial shipping in the Gulf of Aden since mid-November, saying they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians against Israel’s war in Gaza.
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