Gaza mourns children killed in Israeli strike as death toll rises

CAIRO/GAZA — A Gaza family sat weeping Saturday over children killed by an Israeli strike as they were getting ready to play soccer. The strike came amid an intensified bombardment that Palestinian health authorities said killed 44 people over the past 24 hours.

The strike was in Mawasi, a southern coastal area where hundreds of thousands of people have sought shelter after Israel's military told them to leave other areas it was bombing in its war against Hamas.

"The rocket struck them. There were no wanted or targeted people there and there was nobody else in the street. Just the children who were killed yesterday," said Mohammed Zanoun, a relative of the children killed.

Palestinian health authorities say Israel's military campaign in Gaza has killed more than 43,500 people, with another 10,000 believed to be dead and uncounted under the rubble.

Israel launched its offensive in response to the terror attack on October 7, 2023, when Hamas gunmen stormed border defenses and rampaged through Israeli communities killing 1,200 people and seizing around 250 as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Hamas has been designated as a terror group by the United States, the U.K. and other Western countries.

Qatar and peace talks

On-off talks for a cease-fire and hostage release deal mediated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar have made little progress, and Saturday a Qatari official said Doha would pause negotiations unless the two sides committed more fully.

The official said Qatar would stop trying to mediate talks until Hamas and Israel "demonstrate a sincere willingness to return to the negotiating table."

That followed a U.S. official saying Friday that Washington had asked Qatar to close the Hamas office in Doha after the group rejected a cease-fire proposal.

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri dismissed the report as "an American attempt to send a message of pressure to the movement through the media."

In Lebanon

Israeli airstrikes over the last day have killed more than 20 people including several children, Lebanese authorities said Saturday, after Israel’s military pounded the southern suburbs of the capital Beirut overnight.

At least seven people were killed in the coastal city of Tyre late Friday, Lebanon's health ministry said.

At least 16 more people were killed in Israeli strikes Saturday across the eastern plains around the historic city of Baalbek, the area's governor said in a post on social media platform X.

Israel's military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Gaza strikes

The U.N. Human Rights Office said Friday that nearly 70% of the fatalities it had verified in Gaza were women and children. Israel's diplomatic mission in Geneva, where the office is based, said it categorically rejected the report, which it said did not accurately reflect realities on the ground.

Strikes overnight and Saturday morning killed at least 40 Palestinians across the enclave, health officials said.

In one airstrike on a school sheltering displaced families in Gaza City six people including two journalists were killed, while another killed two at a tent inside Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza Strip, they said.

The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said the deaths of Mohammad and Zahara Abu Skhaila raised the number of journalists killed by Israeli fire to 188 since Oct. 7, 2023.

Israel's military did not immediately respond Saturday to a request for comment on strikes on areas where displaced people were sheltering.

The military has said that Hamas fighters hide among the civilian population, and it hits them when it sees them. Hamas denies hiding among civilians.

Famine likely, experts say

For the past month, Israel's main military focus has been in northern Gaza, the first part of the tiny, crowded territory that its troops overran early in the conflict last year.

A committee of global food security experts warned Friday that there was a strong likelihood of imminent famine in northern Gaza amid the renewed fighting.

Israel's military said 11 trucks of food, water and medical supplies had been delivered into the north Gaza areas of Jabalia and Beit Hanoun on Saturday and said the famine assessment was based on "partial, biased data."

It said it was preparing to open the Kissufim crossing into Gaza to expand aid routes.