Israel kills 25 more Gazans as Blinken arrives for truce talks
CAIRO – Israeli strikes killed at least 25 people, including 6 children, in Gaza on Sunday, Palestinian health authorities said, as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken dashed to Tel Aviv in a bid to push forward Gaza ceasefire negotiations.
Health officials said that an Israeli missile strike on their house in Deir Al-Balah killed the children along with their mother. The Israeli military, on the other hand, is quoted as saying that it destroyed rocket launchers in use from the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis, killing 20 Palestinians.
Diplomatic efforts for a ceasefire have intensified in the wake of the latest strikes, mostly on civilians, which pushed the number of those killed past 40,099 since last October. Talks mediated by the US, Egypt, and Qatar are set to start this week in Cairo after a Doha moot that was boycotted by Hamas following the killing of its leader, Ismail Haniyeh.
Secretary Blinken, who arrived in Tel Aviv Sunday, is due to hold separate meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and President Isaac Herzog on Monday before traveling on to Egypt on Tuesday.
Earlier, at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah relatives were standing around the bodies of the mother with her six children wrapped in white shrouds. Their youngest was just 18 months old, said the grandfather, Mohammed Khattab, at the funeral.
“What was their crime? … Did they kill a Jew? Did they shoot at the Jews? Did they launch rockets at the Jews? Did they destroy the state of Israel? What did they do? What did they do to deserve this?” said Khattab. After 10 months of continuous war, desperation to find a safe place becomes a part of living for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. “We are tired of displacement. People are being pushed into narrow areas in Deir Al-Balah and Al-Mawasi, which have become pressure cookers,” said Tamer Al-Burai, who lives in Deir Al-Balah. Tanks were just 1.5km away, Burai added.
The Israeli military ordered the evacuation of areas north of Khan Yunis and east of Deir Al-Balah where thousands of families displaced by earlier fighting had been sheltering in dire conditions. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated the “humanitarian area” now declared safe by Israeli forces at around 11pc of the territory.
Three UN peacekeepers patrolling near Yarine, in south Lebanon, were injured after a blast near their vehicle close to Lebanon’s southern border, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon said.
