Gaza: Dozens killed in Israeli strikes overnight as Netanyahu approves ceasefire talks

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he French, Egyptian and Jordanian foreign ministers called Saturday for an "immediate and permanent ceasefire" in Gaza and the release of all hostages held by Palestinian militants.

Speaking at a joint press conference in Cairo, France's top diplomat Stephane Sejourne said his government would put forward a draft resolution at the UN Security Council setting out a "political" settlement of the war.

He said the text would include "all the criteria for a two-state solution" of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the peace blueprint long championed by the international community but opposed by the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"Israel is not only starving Palestinians, but wants to kill the only entity capable of standing in the way of a famine," Jordanian FM Ayman Safadi said.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said Gaza "can endure no more destruction and humanitarian suffering", and called on Israel to open its land crossings with the Gaza Strip to humanitarian aid.

In a news conference in Israel, families of captives being held in Gaza say that Benjamin Netanyahu's "behaviour regarding the hostages is a crime", according to a report by Channel 13.

"We have no choice but to say: 'We understand that you’re the one who’s blocking the deal'. We’ll do whatever it takes to try and end your term as prime minister. This is a new phase in our battle to bring our kids home," they said.

"We all saw how his own political domestic interests are making him to take decisions. And how much his concern for his coalition is bigger than his obligation to bring the hostages home," a wife of a hostage said, as cited by the report.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said on Saturday that "famine" in Gaza can be dealt with in a short time if Israel opened the land crossings for aid to enter.

Safadi made the comments at a press conference with his Egyptian and French counterparts in Cairo. 

Truce talks between Israel and Hamas will resume on Sunday in Cairo, Egypt's Al Qahera News TV reported on Saturday, citing a security source.

Some 9,000 patients in the Gaza Strip require evacuation for emergency care, with the war-torn Palestinian territory down to just 10 barely functioning hospitals, the head of the WHO said Saturday.

"With only 10 hospitals minimally functional across the whole of #Gaza, thousands of patients continue to be deprived of health care," World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X.

Before the war, Gaza had 36 hospitals, according to the WHO.

"Around 9,000 patients urgently need to be evacuated abroad for lifesaving health services, including treatment for cancer, injuries from bombardments, kidney dialysis and other chronic conditions," he said.

That is up from 8,000 in the WHO's previous assessment at the beginning of March.

More than 50 men have been arrested in Pakistan after a crowd chanting anti-Israel slogans picketed and set fire to a restaurant belonging to American fast food chain KFC, police said Saturday.

The incident took place on Friday evening in the northeastern town of Mirpur, in the Pakistan-administered region of Kashmir, after protesters gathered on the town's main thoroughfare after Ramadan evening prayers.

Videos circulating on social media show men chanting anti-Israel slogans, carrying a banner inscribed with "Free Palestine".

Nearly 400 protesters gathered at the height of the demonstration and clashes broke out with the police, Mirpur police chief Kamran Mughal told AFP.

"We had told them that they can only protest in a certain area. But, when their numbers started growing, they made their way over to KFC," said police superintendent Mughal.

Other videos from inside the restaurant show smashed windows, broken furniture and damaged equipment.

The crowd set fire to the building, but it did not completely burn down.

Israeli authorities have seized about 27,000 dunums of Palestinian land following the Israeli military campaign in Gaza  on October 7, according to the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission.

 The Commission said on the occasion the 48^th anniversary of the Palestinian Land Day and following nearly six months of the brutal Israeli onslaught on the Gaza Strip, the area of Palestinian territory controlled by the occupying state amounted to 2,380 km2, equivalent to 42 percent of the total territory of the West Bank, and 69 percent of the total areas classified as Area C.

Moayed Shaaban, the head of the commission, pointed out that the occupying state had begun to establish buffer zones around the colonies through a series of military orders.

A second vessel carrying aid to the war-torn Palestinian territory Gaza set sail Saturday from Cyprus, more than two weeks after the last shipment arrived by sea.

Almost 400 tons of aid is being carried to Gaza on a flotilla organised by two charities - the US-based World Central Kitchen and the Spanish Open Arms.

The children's charity UNICEF, has stressed that 'nowhere in Gaza is safe' for children, as Israel continues to wage war in the Gaza Strip

"An immediate humanitarian ceasefire provides the best chance to save lives, end suffering and enable the urgent delivery of life-saving aid," they said in a statement. 

Israeli forces on Saturday detained 16 Palestinians as they were leaving the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem, the Palestinian Wafa agency said.

Israeli police deployed additional forces around the Al-Aqsa Mosque, checked the ID cards of people trying to hold the weekly Friday prayers and detained 16 individuals.

The Palestine Red Crescent said five people were killed and dozens wounded by gunfire and a stampede during an aid delivery Saturday in northern Gaza, where famine looms.

AFP video footage shows a convoy of trucks moving past burning debris near the distribution point in pre-dawn darkness as people shout and gunfire echoes -- some of which was warning shots, witnesses said.

The Red Crescent said it happened after thousands of people gathered for the arrival of around 15 trucks of flour and other food, which was supposed to be handed out at Gaza City's Kuwait roundabout, in the territory's north.

The roundabout has been the scene of several chaotic and deadly aid distribution incidents, including one on March 23 in which the Hamas-run government said 21 people were killed by Israeli fire - a charge Israel denied.

The Red Crescent said three of the five killed early Saturday had been shot.

Eyewitnesses told AFP that Gazans overseeing the aid delivery shot in the air, but Israeli troops in the area also opened fire and some moving trucks hit people trying to get the food.

The Israeli military told AFP it "has no record of the incident described."

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned on Saturday the 'targeting' of UN forces in southern Lebanon that wounded four observers.

The health ministry in Gaza said on Saturday that at least 32,705 people have been killed in the territory during more than five months of war in he coastal enclave.

The toll includes at least 82 deaths over the past 24 hours, a ministry statement said, adding that 75,190 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began.

The death toll in Israeli air strikes on Syria has risen to 52, including 38 government soldiers and seven members of Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, a war monitor said Saturday.

Friday's strikes fuelled concerns of a wider regional conflagration.

They targeted "a rocket depot belonging to Lebanon's Hezbollah" near the Aleppo airport in northern Syria, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

It was the latest deadly raid on Iran-backed forces in Syria, where Hezbollah has been backing the government in its fight against opponents since the 2011 Syria civil war erupted.

Israeli strikes on targets in Syria have increased since Israel's war in the Gaza Strip broke out on October 7.

A Jewish settler has allegedly kidnapped a teenage boy from the village of Husan in the west of Bethlehem, occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Wafa news agency sad.

Director of the Husan Village Council, Rami Hamamra, told Wafa that a settler from an outpost close to the village abducted the 17-year-old while herding sheep in the al-Sharafa area in the village.

Wafa also said that settlers and troops raided the village on Friday evening.

An Israeli strike on Saturday hit a vehicle carrying United Nations technical observers outside the southern Lebanese border town of Rmeish, wounding several observers, two security sources told Reuters.

The Israeli military's spokesman Avichay Adraee denied that Israeli forces hit a vehicle belonging to the UN peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, UNIFIL.

There was no immediate comment from UNIFIL or from the UN technical observer mission UNTSO.

One of the security sources said the car carried three UN technical observers and one Lebanese translator. That source, and a second security source, said that the Israeli strike had left several of those in the car wounded.

Israel has been trading fire with the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon for nearly six months in parallel with the Gaza War.

Israel's shelling of Lebanon has killed nearly 270 Hezbollah fighters, but has also killed around 50 civilians - including children, medics and journalists - and hit both UNIFIL and the Lebanese army.

In November, UNIFIL said one of its patrols was hit by Israeli gunfire in southern Lebanon, without leaving casualties.

UNIFIL last month said that the Israeli military violated international law by firing on a group of clearly identifiable journalists, killing a Reuters journalist.

The Israeli army has carried out three attacks in southern Lebanon, the official Lebanese National News Agency (NNA) has reported, targeting the town of Taybeh.

The Israeli army and Lebanon’s Hezbollah group have exchanged near daily fire over their shared border since October 8, one day after the war in Gaza began.

A 13-yaer-old Palestinian child was shot and killed  during an Israeli military raid at dawn into the town of Qabatiya, south of Jenin.

Fawaz Hammad, the director of Al-Razi Hospital in Jenin, said that Nabil Abu Abed, 13, has been killed after being seriously injured by occupation live` bullets.  

Two others were injured, one of them critically, said the Palestinian official news agency, Wafa.

Local sources confirmed that large forces from the occupation army raided the said town, deployed their military vehicles in the streets and neighborhoods, while snipers were deployed on the rooftops of several buildings and shops.

Malaysian authorities have arrested three people suspected of supplying firearms to a 36-year-old man carrying an Israeli passport, who was detained this week at a hotel in Kuala Lumpur, police said on Saturday.

The man, arrested with a bag containing six handguns and 200 bullets, had arrived at Kuala Lumpur International Airport from the United Arab Emirates on March 12 using what authorities believed to be a fake French passport, Inspector-General of Police Razarudin Husain told a press conference late on Friday.

The suspect turned over an Israeli passport upon questioning by police, Razarudin said, adding that the man, who has not been publicly identified, had ordered the weapons after arriving in Malaysia and paid for them with cryptocurrency.

The Israeli embassy in Singapore did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. Malaysia and Israel do not have diplomatic relations.

Police did not rule out the possibility that the man could be a member of Israeli intelligence, though the suspect told authorities he had entered Malaysia to hunt down another Israeli citizen due to a family dispute.

"We do not fully trust this narrative as we suspect there may be another agenda," Razarudin said, adding that the man had stayed at several hotels while in Malaysia.