Israel on Monday denied reports of a deadlock in Gaza cease-fire talks and claimed progress was being made, even as its military continued deadly strikes on civilians in the Palestinian territory.
According to Channel 12, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that progress has been made during the indirect negotiations between the Israeli team and Hamas in Doha.
The talks are taking place in a "positive atmosphere," the statement added.
The Israeli army told the political echelon on Monday that "achieving war goals is currently impossible" under ongoing cease-fire talks and "the priority should be on returning hostages," according to army radio.
Hamas said late Friday that it had submitted a "positive" response to mediators regarding a recent Gaza cease-fire and prisoner exchange proposal.
Israeli media reported that the latest proposal likely includes a phased release of half of the living Israeli hostages (10) and half of the remains (18) over 60 days.
In exchange, Israel would free a larger number of Palestinian detainees still held in its prisons and begin partial troop withdrawals from pre-agreed areas within Gaza.
Major sticking points remain as Hamas wants the U.N. to oversee humanitarian aid distribution, demands security guarantees against renewed hostilities after the 60‑day truce, and seeks clarity on which Palestinian prisoners will be released.
Israel, meanwhile, insists on Hamas disarmament and the exile of its leaders, conditions Hamas has rejected.
Despite international calls for a cease-fire, Israel has pursued a genocidal war on Gaza, killing at least 12 people on Monday, including six in a clinic housing Palestinians displaced after 21 months of war.
The war has created dire humanitarian conditions for the Palestinian territory's population of more than 2 million.
Civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that six people were killed and 15 injured in an Israeli airstrike that hit the al-Rimal clinic, "which houses hundreds of displaced people, in the Al-Rimal neighborhood west of Gaza City."
AFP footage showed Palestinians, including groups of young children, combing through the bombed-out interior of the clinic, where mattresses lay alongside wood, metal and concrete broken apart in the blast.
"We were surprised by missiles and explosions inside the building," eyewitness Salman Qudum told AFP.
"We did not know where to go because of the dust and destruction."
In the south of the territory, Bassal said two people were killed and 20 others injured by Israeli forces' gunfire while waiting for aid near a distribution site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
A U.S.- and Israel-backed group, the GHF took the lead in food distribution in the territory in late May but its operations have had a chaotic rollout with repeated reports of aid seekers killed near its facilities.
The U.N. human rights office said last week that more than 500 people have been killed waiting to access food from GHF distribution points.
The Health Ministry in Gaza on Sunday placed the toll higher, at 751 killed.
In Khan Younis in the south, Bassal reported two people killed in an airstrike on a house and another killed by Israeli gunfire.
An airstrike on a house in Gaza City killed one and injured several others, he added.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.
Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by the civil defence agency.
Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, incursion triggered the war, causing 1,219 deaths and taking 251 hostages, mostly civilians, according to Israeli official figures.
Israel's genocidal war, in comparison, has killed over 57,418 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Health Ministry. The United Nations considers its figures reliable.
