A senior official of Hamas, an organization designated as a terrorist organization by the US and the EU, said on February 3 that no final agreement has yet been reached on an interim ceasefire agreement with Israel in Gaza.
The agreement implies a pause in the fighting in order for some hostages to be released.
Hamas leaders considered a proposed framework put forward by top officials from Israel, Qatar, Egypt and the United States, but more time was needed to "communicate our position," said Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official in Lebanon.
He told a news conference that Hamas "has repeatedly said" that it is "open to discussing any initiative... to end this barbaric aggression against our Palestinian people."
But while Hamdan confirmed that a truce proposal drawn up by mediators in Paris had been received, he said a deal had not yet been reached and the plan lacked some details.
We will soon announce our position, "based on... our desire to put an end to the aggression our people are suffering as soon as possible," he added.
The war erupted after a Hamas attack on October 7 that killed around 1.160 people in Israel, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Hamas extremists also took about 250 hostages, of whom about a hundred were freed during a week-long truce in late November. Israel says 132 remain in Gaza, including at least 27 prisoners believed to have been killed.
In response, Israel launched an air, ground and naval offensive that killed at least 27.238 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken will travel to the Middle East again in the coming days to press for an agreement, the State Department said.
(Radio Free Europe)
Members of the extremist group Hamas were again seen deploying and paying civil servants in the Gaza Strip from which Israel withdrew its troops a month ago.
Signs of a resurgence of Hamas in Gaza's largest city are evidence, according to the Associated Press, of the group's resilience even though Israel has been attacking the area from the air and on the ground for months, since the conflict began on October 7.
Israel has said it is determined to crush Hamas and prevent it from returning to power in Gaza, the enclave it has ruled since 2007.
Four residents of Gaza City told AP that they saw uniformed and plainclothes Hamas members at their police posts and near government offices, but also not far from Shifa Hospital.
They said that civil servants are returning to work, but also that Israel subsequently bombed those government offices from the air.
The return of Hamas police marks an attempt to restore order in the devastated city after Israel withdrew a significant number of troops from northern Gaza last month, a Hamas official told the AP.
He added that the leaders of Hamas ordered the re-establishment of order in the parts of the north of Gaza from which the Israeli forces withdrew, and that the job of the police is to help the civilian population, evacuate and prevent looting of abandoned houses.
Saed Abdel-Bar, a resident of Gaza City, said his cousin received the money at a makeshift Hamas office set up to distribute cash payments of $200 to government officials, including police and municipal workers.
Partial salary payments for at least some government officials signal that Israel has not dealt the final blow to Hamas, even though it claims to have killed more than 9.000 of its members.
Meanwhile, fighting continued in southern Gaza.
At least 11 people were injured when the Israeli army fired smoke bombs at displaced people taking shelter at the headquarters of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in the southern city of Khan Yunis, the organization said.
The Israeli army besieged the Red Crescent facilities for 12 days, during which 43 people were killed and 153 injured.
The Israeli Army announced that operations in Khan Younis will continue for several more days.
At least 17 people, including women and children, were killed overnight in two separate airstrikes in Gaza's southernmost city of Rafah on the border with Egypt, according to the registration office of Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital, where the bodies of the dead were taken.
(Beta)
A barrage of airstrikes and tank fire rocked Gaza's Khan Younis overnight and into the day of February 3, AFP reports of the southern Gaza capital that has been the focus of Israel's offensive.
The health ministry in Gaza, run by Hamas, which is designated a terrorist organization by the US and the EU, said more than 100 people, mostly women and children, were killed across the Palestinian territory overnight.
Israel's military said its forces had killed "dozens of terrorists" in northern and central Gaza in the past 24 hours.
Hundreds of thousands of Gaza's 2,4 million people, displaced by fierce fighting, have fled south to Rafah since the war broke out, their tents pitched along streets and parks.
A city that was once home to 200.000 people now hosts more than half of Gaza's population, the United Nations said.
Civilians who fled to Rafah are located along the border with Egypt trying to avoid parts of the city exposed to fighting in nearby Khan Yunis.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken will travel to the Middle East again in the coming days to promote a new proposal that includes the release of Israeli hostages in exchange for a pause in the fighting, the State Department said.
The war in Gaza began with Hamas' unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, which resulted in the deaths of around 1.160 people, mostly civilians, according to AFP.
Hamas extremists also took about 250 hostages, with Israel saying 132 remain in Gaza, including at least 27 believed to have been killed.
Israel has lost 224 soldiers since the start of its ground operations in Gaza in late October, according to military figures.
(Radio Free Europe)
The Hamas Health Ministry announced today that 27.238 people have died in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.
According to reports, most of the dead were women, children and young people.
The announcement adds that 107 people have been killed in the last 24 hours, and that a total of 66.452 have been wounded since the beginning of the war on October 7 last year.
(BETA)
Houthis from the Yemeni rebel movement "Ansar Allah" launched a rocket attack on the city of Eilat in the south of Israel, said the spokesman of the movement Yahya Sari, as reported by Reuters.
Earlier, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced that its air defense intercepted a surface-to-surface missile over the Red Sea.
Israel-Hamas war - 119th day.
A senior Hamas official said the militant Palestinian movement would respond "very quickly" to the proposal, which includes extended pauses in fighting in Gaza and gradual swaps of hostages, those held by Hamas on its territory, for Palestinians jailed in Israel.
Hamas in Gaza is still holding dozens of hostages, abducted during the movement's bloody incursion into southern Israel on October 7.
The attack, in which 250 people were kidnapped and 1.200 killed, sparked a war in which Israel invaded Gaza with the aim of completely destroying Hamas.
More than 100 hostages were freed during a week-long ceasefire in November, in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners.
In total, more than 27.000 people were killed and 66.000 wounded during the Israeli offensive in Gaza, according to the latest data from the Ministry of Health in that territory, which does not specify the number of civilians and fighters killed, but claims that the majority of those killed are women and children.
The war in Gaza threatens to spill over into neighboring countries, despite the efforts of the top officials of many countries around the world to reduce regional tensions.
(BETA)
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