Truce talks in Cairo have made ‘significant progress’
Welcome to our ongoing live reporting of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza and the wider Middle East crisis. Here’s the latest news in brief to bring you up to speed.
Talks in Cairo aimed at brokering a truce have made “significant progress”, with more negotiations expected in the coming days, Egyptian state-linked outlet Al-Qahera reported on Monday. Al-Qahera cited a high-ranking Egyptian source to report that the progress was made on “several contentious points of agreement”.
The Qatari and Hamas delegations had left the Egyptian capital and were expected to return “within two days to finalise the terms of the agreement”, it reported.
US and Israeli delegations were due to leave the Egyptian capital “in the next few hours” and consultations were expected to continue over the next 48 hours, it added.
Meanwhile, Israel has pulled all of its ground troops out of southern Gaza for “tactical reasons”, the country’s army has said, raising questions about the six-month-old war’s future direction amid the Cairo talks.
The Israel military said a “significant force” would continue to operate in the rest of Gaza.
The troop drawdown is believed to be primarily to relieve reservists after months of fighting in Khan Younis, rather than any significant shift in strategy.
The Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said on Sunday evening that the withdrawal was part of preparations to launch a ground attack on Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah.
In other developments:
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CIA director Bill Burns and Qatari prime minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani will join the negotiators from Egypt, Israel and Hamas in Cairo, according to some media reports. An Israeli delegation will also take part in the talks, an Israeli official said. However, the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, also said on Sunday that Israel would not agree to a ceasefire until the hostages being held in Gaza were released.
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Three people were killed, including a field commander in Lebanon’s Hezbollah elite forces Al Radwan, in an Israeli strike on Al Sultanya village in southern Lebanon, two security sources told Reuters early on Monday.
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None of Israel’s embassies was safe any more, a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader said. Tehran viewed confrontation with Israel as a “legitimate and legal right”, Yahya Rahim Safavi was quoted by the semi-official Tasnim news agency saying on Sunday. He was speaking after a suspected Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus on 1 April for which Tehran has vowed retaliation.
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At least 33,175 Palestinian people have been killed and 75,886 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, Gaza’s health ministry said. Thirty-eight were killed and 71 injured over the past 24 hours, the Hamas-run ministry said on Sunday. UN agencies and charities said the situation was “beyond catastrophic” amid a looming famine.
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Iraq has agreed to send 10m litres of fuel to the Gaza Strip in support of the Palestinian people, the prime minister said. Iraq also agreed to receive wounded Palestinians from Gaza and provide them treatment in government and private hospitals, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani added in a statement on Sunday.
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The White House has pushed back on comments by World Central Kitchen founder José Andrés that Israel is engaged in “war against humanity itself” following the Israeli attack that killed seven aid workers, but ruled out putting US monitors on the ground in Gaza. “There’s going to have to be some changes to the way Israeli defence forces are prosecuting these operations in Gaza to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” the White House national security communications adviser, John Kirby, told the US ABC on Sunday.
Key events
Jason Burke
Late one night in March, Ahmed Abu Jalala rose quietly, trying hard not to wake his family, sleeping around him on the floor of a UN-run school in northern Gaza.
The 54-year-old father knew his six children needed food, but after months of war there was none. Little aid reached Jabaliya, where they had been staying since fleeing their small home in the early weeks of the conflict, and his children had been reduced to eating wild plants. So Abu Jalala went out into the darkness to search for flour being brought by a humanitarian convoy.
“We would never have let him go if we’d known … We’ve not seen or heard of him since,” said Etemad Abu Jalala, the missing man’s uncle.
After six months of war, tens of thousands have disappeared in Gaza, their whereabouts unknown to their relatives or friends. The International Committee of the Red Cross has recorded more than 7,000 calls to its missing persons hotline since the start of the conflict in Gaza but the total is almost certainly many times that figure.
Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian left Oman to visit Syria’s capital Damascus a week after Iran’s consulate there was targeted in a suspected Israeli attack, state media reported on Monday.
Iran has vowed to avenge the death of seven of its Revolutionary Guards commanders who were killed in the attack, with a senior adviser to the Supreme Leader saying on Sunday that Israeli embassies were no longer safe, Reuters reported.
Amirabdollahian started a regional tour on Sunday in Muscat, where he met Omani officials and a representative of Yemen’s Houthis Mohamed Abdelsalam, who said the Iranian-backed militant group would continue to target Israel-bound ships until a ceasefire is reached in Gaza.
“The attack on Iran’s embassy building in Damascus is a new step in Israel’s warmongering and its attempt to expand war regionally,” Amirabdollahian said while in Oman.
Israel typically does not discuss attacks by its forces on Syria. Asked about the strike last week, an Israeli military spokesperson said: “We do not comment on reports in the foreign media”.
Truce talks in Cairo have made ‘significant progress’
Welcome to our ongoing live reporting of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza and the wider Middle East crisis. Here’s the latest news in brief to bring you up to speed.
Talks in Cairo aimed at brokering a truce have made “significant progress”, with more negotiations expected in the coming days, Egyptian state-linked outlet Al-Qahera reported on Monday. Al-Qahera cited a high-ranking Egyptian source to report that the progress was made on “several contentious points of agreement”.
The Qatari and Hamas delegations had left the Egyptian capital and were expected to return “within two days to finalise the terms of the agreement”, it reported.
US and Israeli delegations were due to leave the Egyptian capital “in the next few hours” and consultations were expected to continue over the next 48 hours, it added.
Meanwhile, Israel has pulled all of its ground troops out of southern Gaza for “tactical reasons”, the country’s army has said, raising questions about the six-month-old war’s future direction amid the Cairo talks.
The Israel military said a “significant force” would continue to operate in the rest of Gaza.
The troop drawdown is believed to be primarily to relieve reservists after months of fighting in Khan Younis, rather than any significant shift in strategy.
The Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said on Sunday evening that the withdrawal was part of preparations to launch a ground attack on Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah.
In other developments:
-
CIA director Bill Burns and Qatari prime minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani will join the negotiators from Egypt, Israel and Hamas in Cairo, according to some media reports. An Israeli delegation will also take part in the talks, an Israeli official said. However, the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, also said on Sunday that Israel would not agree to a ceasefire until the hostages being held in Gaza were released.
-
Three people were killed, including a field commander in Lebanon’s Hezbollah elite forces Al Radwan, in an Israeli strike on Al Sultanya village in southern Lebanon, two security sources told Reuters early on Monday.
-
None of Israel’s embassies was safe any more, a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader said. Tehran viewed confrontation with Israel as a “legitimate and legal right”, Yahya Rahim Safavi was quoted by the semi-official Tasnim news agency saying on Sunday. He was speaking after a suspected Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus on 1 April for which Tehran has vowed retaliation.
-
At least 33,175 Palestinian people have been killed and 75,886 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, Gaza’s health ministry said. Thirty-eight were killed and 71 injured over the past 24 hours, the Hamas-run ministry said on Sunday. UN agencies and charities said the situation was “beyond catastrophic” amid a looming famine.
-
Iraq has agreed to send 10m litres of fuel to the Gaza Strip in support of the Palestinian people, the prime minister said. Iraq also agreed to receive wounded Palestinians from Gaza and provide them treatment in government and private hospitals, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani added in a statement on Sunday.
-
The White House has pushed back on comments by World Central Kitchen founder José Andrés that Israel is engaged in “war against humanity itself” following the Israeli attack that killed seven aid workers, but ruled out putting US monitors on the ground in Gaza. “There’s going to have to be some changes to the way Israeli defence forces are prosecuting these operations in Gaza to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” the White House national security communications adviser, John Kirby, told the US ABC on Sunday.
