2LT International News

GAZA STRIP – The Israeli army intensified bombardment of the embattled Gaza Strip on Monday, staging air strikes in the north and the south. The escalation comes amidst negotiations on a temporary 40-day ceasefire in exchange for 33 hostages.

Reuters news agency reports that forty people, including a journalist, were killed in the attacks which targeted houses in Rafah and in Gaza City on Monday.

Airstrikes targeted 3 houses in Rafah while Israeli warplanes bombed two houses in Gaza City, health officials said.

At nightfall, a house in the Al-Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza was targeted in an airstrike. Three Palestinians, including a journalist died according to Reuters quoting medics.

6 other people were killed in other central Gaza areas in separate Israeli air strikes, the officials added.

CAIRO, April 29 (Reuters) – Israeli airstrikes killed dozens of Palestinians on Monday as Hamas leaders visited Cairo for a new round of truce talks, with more than half the dead in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, which foreign leaders have urged Israel not to invade.

Hours after the strikes on Rafah, where almost half of Gaza’s 2.3 million population have sought refuge from months of Israeli bombardment, Egypt’s state-affiliated television said the Hamas delegation left Cairo for Doha and would return at an unspecified later date with a written response to the ceasefire proposal.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Hamas to swiftly accept what he called an “extraordinarily generous” Israeli proposal for a truce in the Gaza war and the release of Israeli hostages held by the Palestinian militant group.

U.S. President Joe Biden and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi spoke by phone to discuss developments in negotiations regarding a ceasefire in Gaza and dangers of military escalation.

Bombs hit three houses in Rafah on Monday. And in Gaza City, in the north of the strip, Israeli warplanes struck two houses, killing at least six people and wounding several others, health officials said.

With nightfall, an Israeli air strike on a house in the Al-Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza killed three Palestinians, including a journalist, medics and Hamas media said. Six other people were killed in other central Gaza areas in separate Israeli air strikes, they added.

Israel’s military on Monday said two soldiers were killed in central Gaza on Sunday.

The armed wing of the Hamas-allied Islamic Jihad said it fired rockets into Israel on Monday, signaling the group was still able to launch rocket attacks after nearly seven months of the Israeli air and ground offensive.

Asked about the Rafah strikes, an Israeli military (IDF) spokesperson said fighter jets had “struck terror targets where terrorists were operating within a civilian area in southern Gaza,” declining to give details, Reuters reported.