(MENAFN- Daily News Egypt) Israeli warplanes continued their bombardment of Gaza on Saturday, killing 34 people in the besieged Palestinian enclave. The attacks, which marked the 316th consecutive day of the Israeli offensive, come as international efforts to broker a ceasefire continue.
The Palestinian News Agency (WAFA) reported that a Palestinian was killed and others injured in an Israeli airstrike on a house in Gaza City's sheikh Radwan neighbourhood. Other casualties were reported in an Israeli bombing of a house near the European Hospital east of Khan Younis.
Israeli warplanes also launched raids on Salah Al-Din Street, the main thoroughfare in Khan Younis, as well as three airstrikes near the southern entrance to the town of Al-Zawaida in the central Gaza Strip.
On Saturday, the Ministry of Health in Gaza reported that Israeli forces committed five massacres in Gaza over the past two days, resulting in 69 deaths and 136 injured arriving at hospitals. The death toll from the Israeli aggression has risen to 40,074 dead and 92,537 injured since October 7, according to the ministry.
“A number of victims are still under the rubble and on the roads, and ambulance and civil defence crews cannot reach them,” the ministry said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Qatar, Egypt, and the United States issued a joint statement on Friday following the end of a round of negotiations in Doha over a ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip and a prisoner exchange deal.
The statement said the talks were“serious and constructive and were held in a positive atmosphere.”
On Friday evening, Egypt's President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi discussed the situation in the region and efforts to restore regional stability in a phone call with US President Joe Biden. The two presidents reviewed the results of the negotiations in Doha.
Al-Sisi stressed the continuation of Egyptian contacts with various parties in the region to urge non-escalation and self-restraint, highlighting the seriousness of the situation in the Middle East. He emphasised the need to respect the sovereignty of states and prevent the region from slipping into a vicious cycle of confrontations and violence.
Hamas leader Sami Abu Zuhri dismissed a ceasefire agreement as an“illusion” following a new proposal presented by the US to reach an agreement between Israel and the Palestinian resistance.
An Israeli technical delegation arrived in Cairo on Saturday to meet with Egyptian security and military officials to discuss the US proposal to operate the Rafah land crossing and the situation in the border area between Egypt and the Gaza Strip.
On the ground, the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, said it detonated two anti-personnel bombs in two Israeli jeeps in the vicinity of the university college in the Tal al-Hawa neighbourhood, south of Gaza City. The group said in a statement that its fighters clashed with remaining soldiers using machine guns, killing and wounding them, and monitored a helicopter landing for evacuation.
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