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Israeli attack wipes out entire families in Gaza's Beit Hanoun amid reignited truce talks
Israeli attacks killed at least 30 Palestinians and wounded many others late on Monday and in the early hours of Tuesday, despite reports that a ceasefire talks were gaining "momentum".
Israeli forces wiped out two entire families of 25 people after bombing a house sheltering them in the Beit Hanoun area, north of the Gaza Strip.
Media outlets quoted relatives of the victims as saying that "the Israeli army bombed a house sheltering two families from the Al-Kahlout family, consisting of 25 people, while they were inside".
The attack comes just one day after health authorities in Gaza reported that power outages in the north, which has been under a full Israeli siege for over two months, threaten the lives of over 100 patients in the Kamal Adwan Hospital.
The head of the hospital, Hussam Abu Safiyya, said electricity, water and oxygen supplies had been cut and recent Israeli shelling had damaged the building.
He specified that there were currently 112 wounded patients in the building, with six of them in intensive care and 14 of them being children.
A prominent young football player for Gaza's Al-Hilal club, Mohammed Khalifa, was also killed in an overnight Israeli bombing on the Al-Nuseirat camp, local media reported.
As the war on the besieged enclave continues to rage on, the International Federation of Journalists said that this year has been "particularly bloody" with 104 journalists killed worldwide, and over half of that figure being in Gaza.
Anthony Bellanger, the secretary general of the organisation, condemned what he called "the massacre taking place in Palestine before the eyes of the world". He added that the region was one of the worst in the history of modern journalism and that many journalists are being "deliberately targeted".
Ceasefire talks
Various reports have in recent days said that Gaza ceasefire negotiations have reached an advanced stage, with Qatar says the talks are gaining "momentum".
Hamas also handed over a preliminary list of names of captives to be released to officials in Egypt’s General Intelligence Service during a Sunday meeting in Cairo.
The list of captives includes those who have medical conditions and the elderly, as well as four people who hold US citizenship, reports say.
Hamas's delegation also handed over a list of Palestinian detainees held in Israeli prisons, which it wants released as part of the deal.
US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, is set to visit Israel on Thursday to discuss the ceasefire in Gaza as well as developments in Syria, ’s Arabic language sister publication, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, reported.
Citing Israeli news site Walla, the report said that Sullivan will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Minister of Strategic Affairs, Ron Dermer.
According to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, an Israeli official estimated on Monday evening that a prisoner-captive exchange deal could be reached in Gaza “within one or two weeks”.
Speaking to Israeli news site Ynet, the official said “the conditions are ripe” for that to happen.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed 44,758 people in Gaza since 7 October 2023 and wounded at least 106,134 others. The war has levelled entire neighbourhoods and plunged the Strip into a deep humanitarian crisis.