CAIRO, April 30 — Israeli airstrikes killed dozens of Palestinians on Monday as Hamas leaders visited Cairo for a new round of truce talks, with more than half the dead in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, which foreign leaders have urged Israel not to invade.
Hours after the strikes on Rafah, where almost half of Gaza’s 2.3 million population have sought refuge from months of Israeli bombardment, Egypt’s state-affiliated television said the Hamas delegation left Cairo for Doha and would return at an unspecified later date with a written response to the ceasefire proposal.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Hamas to swiftly accept what he called an “extraordinarily generous” Israeli proposal for a truce in the Gaza war and the release of Israeli hostages held by the Palestinian militant group.
US President Joe Biden and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi spoke by phone to discuss developments in negotiations regarding a ceasefire in Gaza and dangers of military escalation.
Bombs hit three houses in Rafah on Monday. And in Gaza City, in the north of the strip, Israeli warplanes struck two houses, killing at least six people and wounding several others, health officials said.
With nightfall, an Israeli air strike on a house in the Al-Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza killed three Palestinians, including a journalist and medics, Hamas media said. Six other people were killed in other central Gaza areas in separate Israeli air strikes, they added.
An assault on Rafah, which Israel says is the last Hamas stronghold in the Gaza Strip, has been anticipated for weeks. Foreign governments and the United Nations have expressed concern that such action could result in a humanitarian disaster given the number of displaced people crammed into the area.
— Reuters
