Israel’s Military Pounds Gaza as Pressure Mounts for Cease-fire
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Gaza’s health ministry said that 88 people had been killed over the past day. Israeli and Hamas officials have been holding indirect cease-fire talks via mediators in Qatar.
Dozens of Israeli strikes pounded the Gaza Strip over the weekend as Israeli and Hamas officials continued indirect cease-fire talks through mediators in Qatar.
Israel’s military said on Sunday that it had hit more than 100 targets across the enclave over the weekend, including sites from which militants had fired at least four projectiles toward Israeli territory on Friday and Saturday. It said that the strikes had killed Hamas militants and that the military had taken measures to mitigate the risk of harming civilians. The claims could not be independently verified.
The Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Sunday that 88 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes over the last 24 hours. The ministry’s figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. The Gaza Civil Defense, an emergency services agency, said that its crews had responded to multiple airstrikes on family homes on Sunday in which several people were killed and wounded.
Pressure has been mounting on both sides to reach a cease-fire agreement that would include the release of hostages held in Gaza before President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office on Jan. 20. Hamas and Israel both said they were sending delegations to the Qatari capital, Doha, in recent days to meet with mediators.
The Israeli delegation remained in Doha over the weekend, according to an Israeli person familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of a lack of authorization to discuss the secretive talks publicly. The person said that the discussions in Doha were making slow progress and were aimed at reaching a limited deal that would see a temporary halt in the fighting and some Israeli hostages released in exchange for a number of Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.
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