By Nidal al-Mughrabi
CAIRO (Reuters) -Israeli military strikes killed at least 85 people in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, Palestinian medics said, as the United States and Arab mediators pushed for a ceasefire deal and U.S. President Donald Trump visited the Middle East.
Most of the victims, including women and children, were killed in Khan Younis in southern Gaza in airstrikes that hit homes and tents, they said.
The dead included local journalist Hassan Samour, who worked for the Hamas-run Aqsa radio station and was killed along with 11 family members when their home was struck, the medics said.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which has intensified its offensive in Gaza as it tries to eradicate Hamas in retaliation for the deadly attacks the Palestinian militant group carried out on Israel in 2023.
In Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, the health ministry said an Israeli strike on Al-Tawba medical clinic killed at least 15 people and wounded several others. It took Thursday’s death toll to 85, medics said.
Hamas said in a statement that Israel was making a “desperate attempt to negotiate under cover of fire” as indirect ceasefire talks take place between Israel and Hamas, involving Trump envoys and Qatar and Egyptian mediators in Doha.
Israel carried out the latest strikes on the day Palestinians commemorate the “Nakba”, or catastrophe, when hundreds of thousands of people fled or were forced to flee their hometowns and villages during the 1948 Middle East war that gave birth to the state of Israel.
With most of the 2.3 million people in Gaza internally displaced, some residents of the tiny enclave say suffering is greater now than at the time of the Nakba.
“What we are experiencing now is even worse than the Nakba of 1948,” said Ahmed Hamad, a Palestinian in Gaza City who has been displaced multiple times.
“The truth is, we live in a constant state of violence and displacement. Wherever we go, we face attacks. Death surrounds us everywhere.”
ESCALATING VIOLENCE
Palestinian health officials say the Israeli attacks have escalated since Trump started a visit on Tuesday to the Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates that many Palestinians had hoped he would use to push for a truce.
The latest strikes follow attacks on Gaza on Wednesday that killed at least 80 people, local health officials said.
Little has come of new indirect ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas led by Trump’s envoys and Qatar and Egyptian mediators in Doha.
Hamas says it is ready to free all the remaining hostages it is holding in Gaza in return for an end to the war, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prefers interim truces, saying the war can only end once Hamas is eradicated.
A Palestinian official close to the talks said “no breakthrough has been reached in the Doha talks so far because of Israel’s insistence to pursue the war.”
Israel invaded Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack on southern Israeli communities on October 7, 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken as hostages to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 52,900 Palestinians, according to local health officials. It has left Gaza on the brink of famine, aid groups and international agencies say.
A U.S.-backed humanitarian organisation will start work in Gaza by the end of May under an aid distribution plan, but has asked Israel to let the United Nations and others resume deliveries to Palestinians now until it is set up.
No humanitarian assistance has been delivered to Gaza since March 2, and a global hunger monitor has warned that half a million people face starvation in Gaza.
In another statement later on Thursday, Hamas said it had expected that aid would flow back into Gaza, and ceasefire talks would resume, after it freed American-Israeli soldier Edan Alexander on Monday from captivity in Gaza, according to what it said was an understanding reached with U.S. officials.
“Failing to achieve these steps, and specially allowing humanitarian aid for our people, will cast negative shadows over efforts to conclude prisoner swap negotiation,” said Hamas.
(Reporting and writing by Nidal al-Mughrabi, Editing by Timothy Heritage, William Maclean)
