Dozens killed in Gaza as truce talks resume

CAIRO/GENEVA — Israeli military strikes killed at least 36 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 cease-fire in the more than yearlong conflict resumed in Qatar.

At least 34 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.

In addition, an Israeli airstrike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinian families in Shati camp in Gaza City killed four people and wounded 20 others, medics said.

On Sunday, Israel's military said it had "eliminated more than 40 terrorists" in the Jabalia area in the past 24 hours, as well as dismantling infrastructure and locating "large quantities of military equipment".

Meanwhile, the death toll from an Israeli airstrike on Saturday on a residential district in the town of Beit Lahiya rose to 40, WAFA reported.

The Israeli military said it had carried out "a precise strike using precise munitions on Hamas terrorists within a structure in the area of Beit Lahiya in the Gaza Strip", and "a number of terrorists have been hit in the strike".

The situation in northern Gaza is "catastrophic", World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X on Saturday, warning that "a critical shortage of medical supplies, compounded by severely limited access, are depriving people of lifesaving care".

The directors of the CIA and Israel's Mossad intelligence agency would meet with Qatar's prime minister on Sunday in Doha, an official briefed on the talks told Reuters.

Negotiations will seek a short-term cease-fire 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 cease-fire.

In a separate development, a truck rammed into a bus stop near the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, wounding 35 people, according to Israel's Magen David Adom rescue service. The circumstances were not clear, but Palestinians have carried out dozens of vehicle-ramming attacks over the years. The attack occurred near the headquarters of Mossad.

Agencies via Xinhua