Dozens of Israeli strikes pounded the Gaza Strip over the weekend as Israeli and Hamas officials continued indirect cease-fire talks through mediators in Qatar.
Israel’s military said on Sunday that it had hit more than 100 targets across the enclave over the weekend, including sites from which militants had fired at least four projectiles toward Israeli territory on Friday and Saturday. It said the strikes had killed Hamas militants and that the military had taken measures to mitigate the risk of harming civilians. The claims could not be independently verified.
The Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Sunday that 88 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes over the last 24 hours. The ministry’s figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. The Gaza Civil Defense, an emergency services agency, said that its crews had responded to multiple airstrikes on family homes on Sunday in which several people were killed and wounded.
Pressure has been mounting on both sides to reach a cease-fire agreement that would include the release of hostages held in Gaza before President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office on Jan. 20. Hamas and Israel both said they were sending delegations to the Qatari capital of Doha in recent days to meet with mediators.
The Israeli delegation remained in Doha over the weekend, according to an Israeli person familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the secretive talks. The person said that the discussions in Doha were making slow progress and were aimed at reaching a limited deal that would see a temporary halt in the fighting and some Israeli hostages released in exchange for a number of Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.
Reflecting the abiding gap between the sides, at least in their public positions, Hamas said in a statement on Friday that the current round of talks would focus on an agreement leading to a complete cease-fire and the details for a withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip. Israel had not committed to ending the war, an official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, said last week.
Roughly 100 hostages are still being held in Gaza out of some 250 people taken captive during the Hamas-led attacks in October 2023 that prompted the war. At least a third of them are presumed to be dead.
A weeklong truce in November 2023 allowed for the release of 105 hostages, but subsequent efforts to reach a cease-fire have faltered amid gaps in the two sides’ demands. Each side blames the other for the failure to reach a deal.
Israeli officials have recently said that they believe that Hamas is rebuilding its forces in Gaza. And the group appears to be recruiting new fighters faster than Israel can eliminate them.
Security officials reportedly told an Israeli parliamentary committee last week that Hamas has up to 19,000 fighters, with about 9,000 of them in organized units. Before the war, Israel estimated that Hamas had roughly 25,000 fighters, though Hamas never confirmed that figure.
Mr. Netanyahu said in November that Israel’s military had killed close to 20,000 fighters.
In all, more than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed during the war, according to the health ministry in Gaza.
And as hopes for even a limited cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas rise again, Palestinians and human rights organizations say the humanitarian situation in Gaza is getting even more desperate.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said on Sunday that overnight Israeli airstrikes near Al-Amal Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis caused significant damage to several hospital facilities and killed one person.
Last week, Israeli forces raided the last remaining major hospital in northern Gaza, Kamal Adwan, and forced its staff and patients to evacuate. The Israeli military said that Kamal Adwan was a stronghold for Hamas and that it was carrying out “targeted operations” in the area.
The hospital had been the main provider of medical care in the northernmost stretch of Gaza amid a monthslong offensive by Israel’s military against what it says is a resurgent Hamas.
The World Health Organization said that the raid on Kamal Adwan “put the last major health facility in North Gaza out of service” — and that the remaining patients, caregivers and health workers were transferred to the Indonesian Hospital.
But on Sunday, Gaza’s health ministry said that the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza was no longer providing services to patients or the wounded, leaving the northern part of the enclave without any functioning hospitals amid the near constant bombardment.
Aaron Boxerman contributed to this report.
