Key PointsHamas and Israel have confirmed that ceasefire negotiations have resumed and are continuing in Qatar.It comes as a fresh wave of Israeli strikes killed more than 30 people on Saturday, according to the health ministry.Hamas have released footage of an Israeli hostage held in Gaza.
Rescuers in Gaza said that Israeli strikes across the Palestinian territory killed more than 30 people on Saturday, the day after Hamas militants said peace talks were to resume.
The civil defence agency said a dawn air strike on the home of the al-Ghoula family in Gaza City killed 11 people, seven of them children.
Late on Friday, Hamas had said indirect negotiations with Israel were to resume in Qatar that same night for a truce and hostage release deal.
The militant group, whose October 7 attack on southern Israel triggered the Gaza war, said talks would “focus on ensuring the agreement leads to a complete cessation of hostilities (and) the withdrawal of occupation forces”.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has since confirmed that indirect negotiations have resumed in Qatar, saying a delegation had left on Friday and that “efforts are underway to free the hostages” taken by Hamas in its October 7 attack on Israel.
Mediators Qatar, Egypt and the United States have been engaged in months of effort that have failed to end nearly 15 months of war.
A key obstacle to a deal has been Israel’s reluctance to agree to a lasting ceasefire.
In December, Qatar expressed optimism that “momentum” was returning to the talks following the US election of Donald Trump, who takes office in 16 days.
But Hamas and Israel then accused each other of setting new conditions and obstacles.
On 1 January, Katz warned of even more intense retaliatory strikes if rocket fire continued from Gaza and militants did not release hostages they still held.
Such rocket launches had become rare but have intensified since late December as Israel presses a three-month offensive in the north of the territory.
‘Everything was shaking’
Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said the Ghoula home in Gaza City “was completely destroyed” by the dawn strike.
“It was a two-storey building and several people are still under the rubble,” he said, adding Israeli drones had “also fired on ambulance staff”.
“A huge explosion woke us up. Everything was shaking,” said neighbour Ahmed Mussa. “It was home to children, women. There wasn’t anyone wanted or who posed a threat.”
Elsewhere, the civil defence agency said an Israeli strike killed five security officers tasked with accompanying aid convoys as they drove through the southern city of Khan Younis.
Bassal accused Israel of having “deliberately targeted” them to “affect the humanitarian supply chain and increase the suffering” of the population.
The Israeli army said the five had been “implicated in terrorist activities” and were not escorting aid trucks at the time of the strike.
Medics walk through the aftermath of an attack near al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on Thursday. Source: AAP, ABACA / Middle East Images/PA
Rescuers said strikes elsewhere in Gaza killed 10 other people. The health ministry in Gaza said a total of 136 people had been killed over the previous 48 hours.
Some 1,200 people were killed in the Hamas-led October 7 attack on southern Israel in 2023, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed more than 45,000 people in Gaza, according to figures from the Gaza health ministry, which the United Nations considers reliable.
Hamas releases video of Israeli hostage
The armed wing of Hamas, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, released a video on Saturday of an Israeli hostage held in Gaza since its October 2023 attack.
In the undated, three-and-a-half-minute video recording, a woman who has since been identified as an Israeli soldier urges Israel to do more to secure the hostages’ release, saying her life and that of other captives were in danger because of the ongoing Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip.
In response, her family issued an appeal to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying: “It’s time to take decisions as if it were your own children there.”
The families of hostages held in Gaza by Hamas have repeatedly called on the Israeli government to do more to reach a ceasefire and secure their loved ones’ release. Source: AAP, EPA / Abir Sultan
Hamas militants seized more than 250 hostages during the 2023 attack, of whom 96 remain in Gaza. The Israeli military says 34 of those are dead.
Campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said the latest video was “firm and incontestable proof of the urgency of bringing the hostages home”.
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