[🇧🇩] Israel and Hamas war in Gaza-----Can Bangladesh be a peace broker?

[Saif]

Israel, Hamas defiant as US presses for ceasefire

Israel’s bid to crush Hamas’s capabilities and bring the hostages home dominated talks between Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump, the Israeli prime minister said, even as the Palestinian militants vowed no surrender in Gaza...

www.newagebd.net

Israel, Hamas defiant as US presses for ceasefire
Agence France-Presse . Jerusalem 10 July, 2025, 00:23

Israel’s bid to crush Hamas’s capabilities and bring the hostages home dominated talks between Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump, the Israeli prime minister said, even as the Palestinian militants vowed no surrender in Gaza.

Netanyahu’s visit to Washington — his third since Trump returned as US president in January — came as Doha hosted discussions between the two sides on a possible halt to 21 months of fighting and a hostage release deal.

The indirect talks began on Sunday and have not yet seen any agreement but Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said he was still hopeful of a ceasefire deal.

‘The release of all of our hostages — the living and the deceased, and the elimination of Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, thereby ensuring that Gaza will never again constitute a threat to Israel,’ Netanyahu said after meeting Trump for a second time in 24 hours.

‘We focused on the efforts to release our hostages,’ he said.

‘We are not relenting, even for a moment, and this is made possible due to the military pressure by our heroic soldiers.’

Hamas, whose October 7, 2023 attack on Israel sparked the war in Gaza, said in a statement it would never give up.

‘Gaza will not surrender and the resistance will impose the conditions, just as it imposed the equations,’ it added.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said 22 people, including at least six children, were killed in Israeli strikes in the Palestinian territory on Wednesday.

A Palestinian official close to the talks blamed Israel for a lack of progress after the latest round of discussions broke up late Tuesday with no breakthrough.

‘The current round of negotiations in Doha between Hamas and Israel is still stalling due to the Israeli delegation’s refusal to accept the free entry of aid into the Gaza Strip,’ he said.

Another Palestinian source familiar with the negotiations said the Israeli delegation was ‘mostly listening rather than negotiating, which reflects Netanyahu’s on-going policy of obstruction and sabotaging any potential agreement’.

Witkoff, however, was more upbeat, in line with the US leader who has pushed for a ceasefire deal.

‘We are hopeful that by end of this week we will have an agreement that will bring us into a 60-day ceasefire,’ Witkoff said.

The deal would include the return of 10 live hostages held by Palestinian militant groups since Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel, and nine dead hostages, Witkoff added.

Of 251 hostages seized during attack, 49 are still held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.

Hamas has refused pushes to release all the hostages, demanding an end to the war and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, while Israel wants to ensure militants in Gaza never again pose a threat to its security.

Qatari mediators had warned on Monday that it would take time to seal a deal, though Trump kept up his push to reach an agreement.

‘It’s a tragedy, and he wants to get it solved, and I want to get it solved, and I think the other side wants to,’ Trump told reporters, in reference to Netanyahu and Hamas.

Asked earlier as he met US House speaker Mike Johnson if a ceasefire announcement was imminent, Netanyahu replied: ‘We’re certainly working on it.’

On the ground, Gaza’s civil defence agency on Wednesday said 20 people, including at least six children, were killed in two Israeli air strikes overnight.

The Israeli military said it was looking into the report when contacted by AFP.

‘The explosion was massive, like an earthquake,’ said Zuhair Judeh, 40, who witnessed one of the strikes.

‘It destroyed the house and several nearby homes. The bodies and remains of the martyrs were scattered,’ he added, calling it ‘a horrific massacre’.

Due to restrictions imposed on media in the Gaza Strip and difficulties accessing the area, AFP is unable to independently verify the death tolls and details shared by the parties involved.

Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 57,575 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN considers the figures reliable.

An Israeli group of legal experts on Tuesday accused Hamas of using sexual violence as ‘part of a genocidal scheme’ during its 2023 attack.

Hamas, it said, ‘used sexual violence as a tactical weapon, as part of a genocidal scheme and with the goal of terrorising and dehumanising Israeli society’.

The militant group has categorically denied allegations of using sexual violence, without providing evidence to support its claims.​

 

[Saif]

Israeli blockade in Gaza hits ‘critical point’: UN

The United Nations humanitarian office, OCHA, has warned that the fuel crisis in Gaza due to the Israeli blockade has reached a “critical point” and will cause further deaths and suffering in the besieged Palestinian territory.

www.thedailystar.net

Israeli blockade in Gaza hits ‘critical point’: UN

The United Nations humanitarian office, OCHA, has warned that the fuel crisis in Gaza due to the Israeli blockade has reached a "critical point" and will cause further deaths and suffering in the besieged Palestinian territory.

OCHA said the fuel powering vital functions in Gaza, including water desalination stations and hospitals' intensive care units, is running out quickly, with "virtually no additional accessible stocks left".

"Hospitals are rationing. Ambulances are stalling. Water systems are on the brink," the office said in a statement.

"The deaths this is likely causing could soon increase sharply unless the Israeli authorities allow new fuel in – urgently, regularly and in sufficient quantities."

Israel has imposed a suffocating siege on Gaza since early March.

Over the past weeks, it has allowed some food into Gaza to be distributed through a United States-backed group at sites where hundreds of aid seekers have been shot dead by Israeli fire.

But fuel has not entered the territory in months. Senior World Food Programme official Carl Skau also decried the lack of fuel in Gaza.

"The needs are greater than ever, and our capacity to respond has never been more constrained. Famine is spreading, and people are dying trying to find food," Skau said in a social media post.

"Our teams in Gaza are doing their best to deliver aid and are often caught in the crossfire. We are suffering from shortages of fuel, spare parts and essential communications equipment," Skau added.​

 

[Saif]

Gaza doctors cram babies into incubators as fuel shortage threatens hospitals

Doctors at Gaza’s largest hospital say crippling fuel shortages have led them to put several premature babies in single incubators as they struggle to keep the newborns alive while Israel presses on with its military campaign. Overwhelmed medics say the dwindling fuel supplies threaten to pl

thefinancialexpress.com.bd

Gaza doctors cram babies into incubators as fuel shortage threatens hospitals

REUTERS
Published :
Jul 10, 2025 21:39
Updated :
Jul 10, 2025 21:39

Palestinian newborns share an incubator at Al-Helou hospital due to fuel crisis, according to medics, amid the Israeli military offensive, in Gaza City, July 10, 2025. Photo : REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa

Doctors at Gaza’s largest hospital say crippling fuel shortages have led them to put several premature babies in single incubators as they struggle to keep the newborns alive while Israel presses on with its military campaign.

Overwhelmed medics say the dwindling fuel supplies threaten to plunge them into darkness and paralyse hospitals and clinics in the Palestinian territory, where health services have been pummelled during 21 months of war.

An Israeli military official said around 160,000 litres of fuel destined for hospitals and other humanitarian facilities had entered Gaza since Wednesday, but that its distribution around the enclave was not under Israel’s purview.

While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed the fate of Israeli hostages in Gaza with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington this week, patients at Al Shifa medical center in Gaza City faced imminent danger, doctors there said.

“We are forced to place four, five, or sometimes three premature babies in one incubator,” said Dr. Mohammed Abu Selmia, Al Shifa’s director.

“Premature babies are now in a very critical condition.”

The threat comes from “neither an airstrike nor a missile — but a siege choking the entry of fuel,” Dr. Muneer Alboursh, director general of the Gaza Ministry of Health, told Reuters.

The shortage is “depriving these vulnerable people of their basic right to medical care, turning the hospital into a silent graveyard,” he said.

The Israeli military official said such depictions were creating “a false narrative.” U.N. bodies working in Gaza decide how to distribute fuel and he did not know if fuel had reached Al Shifa yet, he said.

Gaza, a tiny strip of land with a population of more than 2 million, was under a long, Israeli-led blockade before the war between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas erupted.

Palestinians and medical workers have accused the Israeli military of attacking hospitals, allegations it rejects.

Israel accuses Hamas of operating from medical facilities and running command centres underneath them, which Hamas denies.

Patients in need of medical care, food and water are paying the price.

There have been more than 600 attacks on health facilities since the conflict began, the WHO says, without attributing blame. It has described the health sector in Gaza as being “on its knees”, with shortages of fuel, medical supplies and frequent arrivals of mass casualties.

Just half of Gaza’s 36 general hospitals are partially functioning, according to the U.N. agency.

Abu Selmia warned of a humanitarian catastrophe and accused Israel of “trickle-feeding” fuel to Gaza’s hospitals.

COGAT, the Israeli military aid coordination agency, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about fuel shortages at Gaza’s medical facilities and the risk to patients.

OXYGEN RISK

Abu Selmia said Al Shifa’s dialysis department had been shut down to protect the intensive care unit and operating rooms, which can’t be without electricity for even a few minutes.

There are around 100 premature babies in Gaza City hospitals whose lives are at serious risk, he said. Before the war, there were 110 incubators in northern Gaza compared to about 40 now, said Abu Selmia.

“Oxygen stations will stop working. A hospital without oxygen is no longer a hospital. The lab and blood banks will shut down, and the blood units in the refrigerators will spoil,” Abu Selmia said, adding that the hospital could become “a graveyard for those inside”.

Officials at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis are also wondering how they will cope with the fuel crisis. The hospital needs 4,500 litres of fuel per day and it now has only 3,000 litres, said hospital spokesperson Mohammed Sakr.

Doctors are performing surgeries without electricity or air conditioning. The sweat from staff is dripping into patients’ wounds, he said.

Earlier this year, Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza for nearly three months, before partly lifting it while introducing a U.S. and Israeli-backed scheme that largely bypasses the U.N. system. Israel accuses Hamas of diverting aid, something Hamas denies.

“You can have the best hospital staff on the planet, but if they are denied the medicines and the pain killers and now the very means for a hospital to have light ... it becomes an impossibility,” said James Elder, a spokesperson for U.N. children’s agency UNICEF, recently returned from Gaza.

The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered in October 2023, when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Gaza’s health ministry says Israel’s response has killed over 57,000 Palestinians. It has also caused a hunger crisis, internally displaced almost all Gaza’s population and prompted accusations of genocide and war crimes, which Israel denies.​

 

[Saif]

Gaza civil defence says 52 killed by Israeli forces

Gaza's civil defence agency on Thursday said at least 52 people, including eight children, were killed by Israeli forces in the Palestinian territory battered by more than 21 months of war.

en.prothomalo.com

Gaza civil defence says 52 killed by Israeli forces
AFP Gaza City
Published: 10 Jul 2025, 21: 07

A Palestinian boy stands amid the destruction in the aftermath of an Israeli strike in the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on 10 July, 2025. AFP

Gaza's civil defence agency on Thursday said at least 52 people, including eight children, were killed by Israeli forces in the Palestinian territory battered by more than 21 months of war.

The latest deadly strikes and gunfire came just hours after Hamas, which runs Gaza, announced it was willing to release 10 hostages as part of indirect ceasefire talks with Israel.

Israel has recently expanded its military operations in the Gaza Strip, where the war has created dire humanitarian conditions for the population of more than two million people.

Civil defence official Mohammad al-Mughair told AFP that 17 people were killed in a strike in front of a medical point in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.

The Israeli military told AFP that it had struck a Hamas militant in Deir el-Balah who had infiltrated Israel during the group's 7 October, 2023 attack.

It said it "regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals and operates to minimize harm as much as possible", adding the incident was under review.

Mughair said eight children and two women were killed in the strike.

Yousef Al-Aydi, 30, said he was among dozens of people, mostly women and children, waiting for nutritional supplements in front of the medical point.

"Suddenly, we heard the sound of a drone approaching, and then the explosion happened," he told AFP by phone.

"The ground shook beneath our feet, and everything around us turned into blood and deafening screams."

A Palestinian boy stands amid the destruction in the aftermath of an Israeli strike in the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on 10 July, 2025.AFP

'Killed instantly'

"What was our fault? What was the fault of the children?" asked Mohammed Abu Ouda, 35, who had also been waiting for supplies.

"I saw a mother hugging her child on the ground, both motionless -- they were killed instantly."

AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details due to media restrictions in Gaza.

Four people were killed and several injured in a pre-dawn air strike on a family home in Al-Bureij camp in central Gaza, Mughair added.

AFP footage from Al-Bureij showed a family including three young children sitting among rubble outside their tattered tent after an air strike hit a house next door.

Mughair reported 27 more people killed in bombardments across the territory, including 15 people in five separate strikes in the area of Gaza City.

One person was killed southwest of the southern city of Khan Yunis by "Israeli military fire", Mughair said.

Three more, including a woman, were killed by Israeli gunfire on civilians near an aid centre in the northwest of nearby Rafah, he added.

More than 600 people have been killed around aid distributions and convoys in Gaza since late May, when Israel began allowing in a trickle of supplies, the United Nations said in early July.

The war began after Hamas militants attacked Israel on 7 October, 2023, leading to the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians.

Israel's retaliatory strikes have killed at least 57,680 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry. The United Nations deems the figures reliable.​

 

[Saif]

Hamas agrees partial hostage release in 'difficult' truce talks

Of 251 hostages seized during the assault on Israeli border communities near Gaza, 49 are still held in the territory, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead

en.prothomalo.com

Hamas agrees partial hostage release in 'difficult' truce talks

AFP Jerusalem
Published: 10 Jul 2025, 09: 24

A Palestinian man carries a mattress after an Israeli strike which hit a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in the Al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip on 8 July, 2025 AFP

Hamas on Wednesday said it would release 10 hostages as part of Gaza ceasefire talks after Israel struck an upbeat note about the prospects for a deal to stop the fighting in the embattled Palestinian territory.

The Islamist group's statement came after four days of indirect talks brokered by Qatar and as the United States signalled its belief that agreement for a 60-day truce would be struck before the end of the week.

US special envoy Steve Witkoff said part of the deal would be the return of 10 living hostages held by militants since Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which sparked the war.

Of 251 hostages seized during the assault on Israeli border communities near Gaza, 49 are still held in the territory, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.

In its statement, Hamas said key hurdles remained in the talks, notably the free flow of aid into Gaza, Israeli military withdrawal from the territory and "real guarantees" for a lasting peace.

But it added: "The movement displayed the required flexibility and agreed to release 10 prisoners (hostages).

"Despite the difficulty of negotiations over these issues until now due to the intransigence of the occupation, we continue to work seriously and with a positive spirit with the mediators to overcome the hurdles and end the suffering of our people and ensure their aspirations to freedom, safety and a dignified life."

Israel earlier appeared to fall in behind US President Donald Trump and his optimism for an end to the conflict, as the talks in Doha stretched into a fourth day with reported complaints on its stance on aid.

Israeli army chief Eyal Zamir said in a televised address that military action had prepared the ground for a deal that would bring home the Israeli hostages.

Netanyahu, who after talks with Trump in Washington on Tuesday night was still uncompromising in his determination to crush Hamas, said he believed an agreement was on the horizon.

"I think we're getting closer to a deal," he told FOX Business Network's Mornings with Maria programme. "There's a good chance that we'll have it."

Foreign Minister Gideon Saar also said he thought a temporary deal was "achievable" and could even herald talks for a more lasting peace, while President Isaac Herzog talked of "a historic opportunity" for change.

"We are in an era of tectonic shifts, where the global balance of power and the regional strategic landscape are being reshaped," Herzog said.

"We must not miss this moment."

'Mostly listening'

Netanyahu is insistent he wants to permanently neutralise the threat to Israel from Hamas.

But he is under increasing pressure at home and abroad to end the war, particularly as the death toll of soldiers killed by homemade bombs and ambushes in Gaza increases.

The military announced on Wednesday another soldier had been killed in combat in Gaza.

Hamas has vowed "Gaza will not surrender".

One Palestinian source familiar with the negotiations in Doha said the Israeli delegation was "mostly listening rather than negotiating, which reflects Netanyahu's ongoing policy of obstruction and sabotaging any potential agreement".

The militant group had previously rebuffed pressure to release all the hostages, demanding an end to the war and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, while Israel wants to ensure militants in Gaza never again threaten its security.

Qatari mediators had warned on Tuesday it would take time to seal a deal.

'Like an earthquake'

On the ground, Gaza's civil defence agency said Wednesday 26 people were killed in Israeli strikes, at least six of them children.

"The explosion was massive, like an earthquake," said Zuhair Judeh, 40, who witnessed one of the strikes, which prompted frantic scenes as people scrabbled in the rubble for survivors.

"The bodies and remains of the martyrs were scattered," he added, calling it "a horrific massacre".

In response to an AFP request for comment on a strike on the Al-Shati camp near Gaza City, the Israeli military said it "struck a number of Hamas terrorists".

Due to restrictions imposed on media in the Gaza Strip and difficulties accessing the area, AFP is unable to independently verify the death tolls and details shared by the parties involved.

Hamas's October 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory campaign has killed at least 57,680 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry. The United Nations considers the figures reliable.​