By Nidal al-Mughrabi
CAIRO (Reuters) – Israeli military strikes across the Palestinian Gaza Strip killed at least 61 people in the space of 24 hours, local medics said on Saturday, as Israeli forces battled Hamas-led militants in the territory.
Eleven months into the war, numerous rounds of diplomacy have so far failed to clinch a ceasefire deal to end the conflict and bring the release of Israeli and foreign hostages held in Gaza as well as many Palestinians jailed in Israel.
An Israeli air strike in on the Halima al-Sa’diyya school compound serving as a shelter for displaced people in the Jabalia urban refugee camp killed at least eight people and wounded 15 others, medics said.
The Israeli military said the strike had targeted a Hamas command centre inside the compound. It accused Hamas of repeatedly exploiting civilians and civilian infrastructure for military purposes, an allegation Hamas denies.
Five more people were killed in a strike on a house in Gaza City.
The armed wings of the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah groups said they had fought Israeli troops in Gaza City, in central areas and in the south with anti-tank rockets and mortars, and in some incidents detonated bombs to target tanks and other army vehicles.
The two warring sides continued to blame one another for the failure of mediators, including Qatar, Egypt and the United States, to broker a ceasefire. The U.S. is preparing to present a new proposal, but the prospects of a breakthrough appear dim as gaps between the sides remain large.
CIA Director William Burns, the chief U.S. negotiator, told an event in London that a more detailed proposal would be made in the coming days.
PAUSES IN FIGHTING LET POLIO VACCINATIONS CONTINUE
On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said it was incumbent on both Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which ran Gaza before the war and was responsible for the Oct. 7 killing spree against Jews in Israel that triggered it, to make concessions to reach a deal.
On Saturday, senior Hamas official Hossam Badran said the group had made no new demands and remained committed to a July 2 proposal put forward by the United States, accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of attaching new conditions that would not end the war.
Netanyahu says it was Hamas that introduced unacceptable conditions.
Despite the deadlock, the United Nations, in collaboration with local health authorities, has pursued a campaign to vaccinate 640,000 children in Gaza after its first polio case in around 25 years. Limited pauses in the fighting have allowed the campaign to proceed.
U.N. officials said they were making progress, having reached over half of the children needing the drops in the first two stages in the southern and central Gaza Strip.
On Sunday, the campaign will move to the northern Gaza Strip. A second round of vaccination will be required four weeks after the first.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct. 7 when group Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent assault on the enclave has killed over 40,900 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry, while also displacing nearly the entire population of 2.3 million, causing a hunger crisis and leading to genocide allegations at the World Court, which Israel denies.
(Reporting and writing by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
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