The Palestinian death toll from Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza neared 30,000 Wednesday as mediators insisted a truce could be days away.
Another 91 people were killed in overnight Israeli bombardment, the health ministry said.
Mediators from Eygpt, Qatar and the United States have been trying to find a path to a cease-fire amid the bitter fighting, with negotiators seeking a six-week pause in the nearly five-month war.
After a flurry of diplomacy, mediators said a deal could finally be within reach – reportedly including the release of some Israeli hostages held in Gaza since the Oct. 7 Hamas incursion, in exchange for several hundred Palestinian detainees held by Israel.
“My hope is by next Monday we’ll have a cease-fire” but “we’re not done yet,” U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday.
Qatari foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari said Doha was “hopeful, not necessarily optimistic, that we can announce something” before Thursday.
But he cautioned that “the situation is still fluid on the ground.”
Doha has suggested the pause in fighting would come before the beginning of Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month which starts on March 10 or 11, depending on the lunar calendar.
Hamas had been pushing for the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza – a demand rejected outright by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Desperate situation
But a Hamas source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the deal might see the Israeli military leave “cities and populated areas,” allowing the return of some displaced Palestinians and humanitarian relief.
Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 29,954 people, mostly women and children, according to the territory’s Health Ministry.
The war was triggered by the Hamas incursion that resulted in the deaths of around 1,160 people, according to an AFP tally of official figures.
Resistance fighters also took about 250 hostages, 130 of whom remain in Gaza, including 31 presumed dead, according to Israel.
Since the war began, hundreds of thousands of Gazans have been displaced, with nearly 1.5 million people now packed into the far-southern city of Rafah, where Israel has warned it plans to launch a ground offensive.
Those who remain in northern Gaza have been facing an increasingly desperate situation, aid groups have warned.
“If nothing changes, a famine is imminent in northern Gaza,” the World Food Programme’s deputy executive director Carl Skau told the U.N. Security Council Tuesday.
His colleague from the U.N. humanitarian office OCHA, Ramesh Rajasingham, warned of “almost inevitable” widespread starvation.
Ongoing strikes
Most aid trucks have been halted, but foreign militaries have air-dropped supplies including Tuesday over Rafah and Gaza’s main southern city Khan Younis.
What aid does enter Gaza passes through the Rafah border crossing from Egypt, fuelling a warning from U.N. chief Antonio Guterres that any assault on the city would “put the final nail in the coffin” of relief operations in the territory.
Israel has insisted it would move civilians to safety before sending troops into Rafah but it has not released any details.
Egypt has warned that an assault on the city would have “catastrophic repercussions across the region,” with Cairo concerned about an influx of refugees.
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