TEL AVIV:
A strike killed at least 21 people, including six children, in Gaza on Sunday, Palestinian health authorities said.
The children and their mother were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a house in the central town of Deir Al-Balah,
health officials said.
Meanwhile, Israel’s prime minister, under pressure at home and from abroad to reach a ceasefire deal with Hamas, accused the militants of obstinance in Gaza truce talks as top US diplomat Antony Blinken landed in Israel. Making his ninth trip to the Middle East since the Gaza war began when Hamas attacked Israel in October, the US secretary of state is to meet Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders in a renewed bid to seal a deal that could help avert a wider conflagration.
Blinken is later set to travel on Tuesday to Cairo, where ceasefire talks will resume in the coming days.
Ahead of Blinken’s visit, the foreign ministers of Britain and France were on Friday also in Israel to stress the urgency of a Gaza deal.
In late May, US President Joe Biden laid out a framework which he said was proposed by Israel. The UN Security Council later endorsed the proposal, which would freeze fighting for an initial six weeks as Israeli hostages are exchanged for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and humanitarian aid enters the besieged Gaza Strip.
Ahead of the truce talks in Doha last Thursday and Friday, Hamas called on mediators to implement the Biden framework rather than holding more negotiations. Hamas also announced its opposition to what it called “new conditions” from Israel.
US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators reported progress and a US official said remaining gaps were “bridgeable”.
