Gaza: Dozens killed in Israeli strikes amid reports of new talks in Egypt

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A Lebanese military source said an Israeli strike Sunday killed one person in the country's south, where Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah group have been exchanging near-daily cross-border fire since last October, when Israel's indiscriminate war on Gaza broke out.

"An Israeli drone targeted a car in Kunin and killed a person who was in the car," a military official told AFP, referring to a village about 10 kilometres (six miles) from the border.

The source, who requested anonymity because they are not allowed to speak to the media, did not mention whether the person was a civilian or a fighter.

Lebanon's state-run media also said a drone strike had hit a car.

"An Israeli enemy drone carried out an air strike," the National News Agency said, adding that it targeted a car on the road to Kunin.

It did not mention casualties.

An uptick in deadly exchanges in recent days has fuelled concerns of an all-out conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, who last fought a war in 2006.

On Saturday, UN peacekeepers said three military observers and a translator were wounded in a blast in southern Lebanon.

On Friday, the Israeli military said they killed the deputy head of Hezbollah's rocket unit in a strike on south Lebanon.

Cross-border fire since October has killed at least 347 people in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah fighters, and at least 68 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

The fighting has also displaced tens of thousands of people in southern Lebanon.

A Hamas official voiced pessimism Sunday that a new round of hostage and truce talks would lead to any breakthrough because the gap between the two sides' positions was too wide.

"I doubt that there will be any progress in these negotiations because the positions are too far apart. Netanyahu is not serious and not interested," the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to undergo hernia surgery on Sunday, his office said, noting he will be put under full anaesthesia.

The procedure comes as Israel continues its indiscriminate attacks on Gaza, killing an estimated 77 people in the past 24 hours.

Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Minister Yariv Levin will stand in as prime minister during the 74-year-old's operation, Netanyahu's office said.

Doctors discovered the hernia on Saturday during a routine checkup, and after consultations the decision was made for Netanyahu to undergo surgery after completing his daily schedule, his office said.

Doctors implanted a pacemaker in Netanyahu in July 2023 after a medical scare.

Israel claimed on Sunday a strike that hit the grounds of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

The Gaza government media office earlier said that Israeli forces had committed a "terrible crime" by targeting journalists and displaced people inside the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital grounds.

At least two people were killed and many journalists were injured.

The Israeli military however claimed that its strike was "precise" and targeted an Islamic Jihad "command centre and terrorists" while "minimising harm to uninvolved civilians in the area of the hospital".

Many civilians have sought shelter and set up tents on hospital grounds in order to seek shelter from Israel's indiscriminate bombardment of the Gaza Strip, which has so far killed at least 32,782 people.

Activists in Jordan called for further protests Sunday after days of demonstrations against the war in Gaza and Jordan's peace treaty with Israel that brought thousands onto the streets.

Jordan, where over half the population is of Palestinian origin, has seen regular rallies in Amman and elsewhere in solidarity with Gaza amid Israel's brutal and indiscriminate military onslaught which has killed at least 32,782 people.

Recent protests have seen rare clashes between protesters and security forces in the capital and in Jordan's largest Palestinian refugee camp.

The group Jordanian Youth Gathering urged people to return later Sunday to the Israeli embassy in Amman "to support the resistance in Gaza and demand the cancellation of the Jordanian Israeli peace treaty and cut all ties with Israel".

In 1994, Jordan became the second Arab country, after Egypt in 1979, to sign a peace treaty with Israel.

"No to a Zionist embassy on Jordanian territory", read one banner at Saturday's embassy protest, where people have gathered every evening since the holy month of Ramadan began more than two weeks ago.

Security forces said on Sunday they had arrested a number of protesters 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of Amman at the Beqaa refugee camp.

Beqaa camp, home to more than 100,000 Palestinians, is one of six camps set up to house the influx of refugees fleeing the West Bank and Gaza Strip during the Arab-Israeli war of 1967.

Jordan has 2.2 million people who have been registered by UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

Gaza’s government media office has accused Israel of deliberately bombing the tents of displaced people and journalists on the grounds of Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital in Deir al-Balah.

In a statement published on Telegram, the media office said Israel had committed “a new massacre by bombing the tents of journalists and displaced people inside the walls of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital”.

“We hold the US administration, the occupation and the international community fully responsible for this crime for their military and political support for the occupation,” the statement added.

BREAKING: Several journalists were just injured in an Israeli shelling in the vicinity of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza. pic.twitter.com/0B98yR9xIm

— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) March 31, 2024

Gaza's health ministry said Sunday that at least 32,782 people have been killed during more than five months of indiscriminate Israeli war on the territory.

The toll includes at least 77 deaths over the past 24 hours, a ministry statement said, adding that 75,298 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began after a surprise Hamas attack on Israel on October 7.

Pope Francis on Sunday renewed his calls for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and the release of Israeli hostages, as fresh truce negotiations between Israel and Hamas were due to begin.

"I appeal once again that access to humanitarian aid be ensured to Gaza, and call once more for the prompt release of the hostages seized on October 7 and for an immediate ceasefire in the Strip," the Pope said in his Easter message in the Vatican

At least two Palestinians were killed when Israel bombed the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, Al-Jazeera TV reports.

A number of journalists were injured in the strike.

Eyewitnesses said that the bombing targeted a tent on hospital grounds, with a video showing the remains of the burned tent.

تغطية صحفية: طيران الاحتلال يقصف خيمة داخل مستشفى شهداء الأقصى في دير البلح قبل قليل pic.twitter.com/BUn32LCSUJ

— شبكة قدس الإخبارية (@qudsn) March 31, 2024

At least 13 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip on Sunday morning in a series of Israeli air and artillery strikes targeting Khan Yunis and Gaza city, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.

Eleven people were killed and dozens wounded when Israeli forces targeted civilians in Bani Suheila, east of Khan Yunis. In the Al-Masawi area, west of Khan Yunis, a woman and her daughter were killed in an artillery bombardment, WAFA said.

Israeli airstrikes also targeted a residential tower in the Al-Asra area of Gaza city.

Protesters blocked Tel Aviv's ring road Saturday after two demonstrations in Israel's biggest city called for the release of hostages held in Gaza and criticised the government's handling of the war.

Police used water cannon against protesters who lit fires and used lorries to block both carriageways of the motorway.

In Jerusalem, hundreds picketed the home of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanding he resign. Israeli media reported smaller anti-government protests across the country.

Thousands had gathered earlier in Tel Aviv to hear the families of hostages seized by Palestinian militants on October 7 call for a mass rally in front of the country's parliament next week.

At the same time anti-government protesters gathered nearby outside the Ministry of Defence, putting the blame for the hostages' fate on Netanyahu, with pictures of his face next to the text: "UR the boss, UR to blame."

Police said the demonstration was illegal and called the protesters "rioters" as they poured onto the ring road, blocking it for more than an hour.

Many of those who took to the streets in support of the hostages' families joined the anti-government protesters, an AFP photographer said.

Militants from Hamas and other Palestinian groups seized about 250 hostages on October 7, of whom Israel believes 130 remain in Gaza, including 33 who are presumed dead.

Former hostage Raz Ben Ami, who was freed in November after a deal brokered by Qatar and Washington, appealed directly to Netanyahu to speed up talks for the release of the rest.

She told Netanyahu to give negotiators due to meet in Cairo and Doha next week an order: "Do not return without a deal."

Israeli police said a man was shot dead Sunday after stabbing an Israeli soldier at bus station in the southern city of Beersheba.

Another soldier was wounded in the attack, police said, and the Israeli army said one of its troops then "neutralised the terrorist".

The Israeli military said an "IDF officer was lightly injured as a result of a stabbing attack" as police said the attacker was killed by gunfire.

Israeli media said the attacker was a young Israeli citizen whose Bedouin clan hails from the Negev desert region of which Beersheva is the largest city.

Medics said they treated a 20-year-old soldier at the scene "with a stab wound to his body" before he was taken to hospital.

There has been a series of deadly knife attacks across Israel and the occupied West Bank since the beginning of Israel's indiscriminate war on Gaza last October.