Iran agrees to a ceasefire, the State Department says
The US will keep both Israel and Iran in an agreed ceasefire, a State Department spokesperson said
At least eight Palestinians, most of them children, were killed, and more than dozens were injured in central Gaza when they went to collect water on July 13, local officials said they collected water on an Israeli strike where the military said they missed the target.
Israeli forces said the missiles had intended to attack Islamic jihadi extremists in the area, but malfunctions caused them to collapse “dozens of meters from the target.”
“The IDF regrets the harm to civilians who are not involved,” he said in a statement, adding that the case is under review.
Ahmed Abu Saifan, an emergency physician at Al-Awda Hospital, said the strike struck a water distribution point at the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing six children and injuring 17 people.
Water shortages in Gaza have deteriorated sharply in recent weeks, with fuel shortages closing desalination and sanitation facilities, relying on collection centres that can fill plastic containers.
Hours later, 12 people were killed in Israel’s strike at a market in Gaza city, including a prominent hospital consultant, Palestinian media reported. Israeli forces did not immediately comment on the attack.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said more than 58,000 people have been killed since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in October 2023, with 139 people added to the death toll over the past 24 hours.
Rather than distinguishing civilians from fighter jets in its tally, the ministry says more than half of those killed are women and children.
The discussion was stuck
Negotiations aimed at securing a ceasefire were divided into the scope of Israel’s final withdrawal from the Palestinian enclave, Palestinian and Israeli sources said over the weekend.
Indirect talks about the US proposal for a 60-day ceasefire is taking place in Doha, but the optimism that surfaced in the transaction last week has largely faded, with both sides denounced incompromising each other.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video posted on Telegram on Sunday that Israel will not retreat from its core demands — releasing all Gaza hostages, destroying Hamas, and Gaza will never again be a threat to Israel.
Netanyahu was scheduled to convene the ministers later on Sunday to discuss the ceasefire talks.
The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants rushed into Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages to Gaza. Of the remaining 50 hostages, at least 20 are thought to be still alive.
Israel’s campaign against Hamas has driven out almost the entire population of more than 2 million people, but Gazaans say it’s not safe anywhere in the coastal enclave.
A missile crashed into a Gaza home on Sunday morning, where the family moved after receiving an evacuation order from their home in the south suburbs.
“My aunt, her husband and children are gone. What is the fault of the children who died in the bloody massacre at dawn?” said Anas Matar, standing inside the tiled bleed of the building.
“They came here and they were attacked. There’s no safe place in Gaza,” he said.
(Additional reports by Mahmoud Issa of Gaza, Ali Sawafuta of Ramala and Heba Fuuad of Cairo, edited by Ross Russell)
