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Key Points
- At least 80 Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes across Gaza on Wednesday, civil defence said.
- US President Donald Trump visited Qatar for talks on a potential Gaza deal.
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed the ongoing hostage crisis with US envoy Steve Witkoff.
Gaza rescuers said at least 80 people were killed in Israeli bombardment across the Palestinian territory on Wednesday, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to United States envoy Steve Witkoff about the release of hostages held in Gaza.
Negotiations for the release of the captives held in Gaza have been ongoing, with the latest talks taking place in the Qatari capital Doha, where US President Donald Trump was visiting on Wednesday.
Netanyahu’s office said the prime minister had discussed with Witkoff and his negotiating team “the issue of the hostages and the missing”.
Witkoff later said Trump had “a really productive conversation” with the Qatari emir about a Gaza deal, adding that “we are moving along and we have a good plan together”.
Fighting, meanwhile, raged in Gaza, where civil defence official Mohammed al-Mughayyir told Agence France-Presse 80 people had been killed by Israeli bombardment since dawn.
AFP footage from the aftermath of a strike in Jabalia, northern Gaza, showed mounds of rubble and twisted metal from collapsed buildings. Palestinians, including young children, picked through the debris in search of belongings.
Footage of mourners in northern Gaza showed women in tears as they knelt next to bodies wrapped in bloodstained white shrouds.
“It’s a nine-month-old baby. What did he do?” one of them cried out.
Hasan Moqbel, a Palestinian who lost relatives, told AFP: “Those who don’t die from airstrikes die from hunger, and those who don’t die from hunger die from lack of medicine.”
Israel’s military on Wednesday urged residents in part of a Gaza City neighbourhood to evacuate, warning its forces would “attack the area with intense force”.
Is there pressure to reach a ceasefire?
From the occupied West Bank, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he favoured a “ceasefire at any price” in Gaza, accusing Netanyahu of wanting to continue the war “for his own reasons”.
And in a letter addressed to Netanyahu and sent to Trump and Witkoff, 67 former hostages held by Hamas in Gaza urged for a “negotiated deal” for the return of all the captives still held there.
“The majority of Israeli society wants the hostages home — even at the cost of halting military operations,” the letter said.
Mohammad Awad, an emergency doctor in northern Gaza’s Indonesian Hospital, told AFP supply shortages meant his department could not properly handle the flow of wounded and that “the bodies of the martyrs are lying on the ground in the hospital corridors”.
“There are not enough beds, no medicine, and no means for surgical or medical treatment, which leaves doctors unable to save many of the injured who are dying due to lack of care,” he said.
Israel broke a ceasefire with Hamas on 18 March, and imposing a blockade on food and medicine entering the enclave.
Following a short pause in airstrikes during the release of US-Israeli hostage Edan Alexander on Monday, Israel resumed its pounding of Gaza.
Netanyahu said on Monday the military would enter Gaza “with full force” in the coming days.
His security cabinet has signed onto a plan to seize the entirety of Gaza and displace the Palestinian population.
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