Palestinians say Israeli attacks in Gaza kill 18 people, including 8 children

Palestinian authorities believe that at least 18 people, including eight children, were killed in Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip.

The Civil Defense, a Hamas government aid organization, said three children and their mother were killed in an airstrike in the Tufah neighborhood of Gaza City late Monday night. Three other people were missing after the attack.

Another attack hit a building in downtown Gaza late Monday, killing a child, three women and a man, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Five people, including a man, his three children, each aged three, and a woman, were killed in an attack on a house in the southern Gaza Strip early Tuesday, according to a casualty list at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, where the bodies were taken.

Another airstrike early Tuesday leveled a house west of Khan Younis, killing at least four people, including a child, according to Nasser Hospital, where the dead were taken. Footage posted online shows residents digging through the rubble. One man carried an injured child to an ambulance while two others carried a body wrapped in a blanket.

Palestinian health authorities do not provide information on whether those killed in Israeli attacks were civilians or fighters.

Israel says it tries to avoid civilians and accuses Hamas of putting them at risk by fighting in residential areas. But the military rarely comments on isolated strikes that often kill women and children.

According to the Gaza Health Ministry, the Israeli offensive has killed over 40,000 people in the Gaza Strip. The war began when Hamas-led militants entered southern Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting about 250.

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Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff meets with Israeli defense leaders

TEL AVIV, Israel — General CQ Brown, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with senior Israeli defense officials on Monday and visited the headquarters of the Army's Northern Command.

Navy Captain Jereal Dorsey, Brown's spokesman, said the chairman met with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi in ​​Tel Aviv and participated in operational updates with Israel Defense Forces leadership.

“The leaders reaffirmed the importance of the U.S.-Israel strategic partnership while discussing recent clashes on the Israeli-Lebanese border and the need to de-escalate tensions to avoid a larger conflict,” Dorsey said.

He said they also discussed Israel's need for self-defense, as well as the need for increased humanitarian support to Gaza and the importance of minimizing civilian casualties. Dorsey said they discussed Brown's recent meetings with other partners in the region. He visited Jordan and Egypt.

He said the US “continues to coordinate with Israel and other allies and partners on ways to enhance regional security and stability, protect US forces in the Middle East and deter a larger conflict.”

Gallant's office said the Israeli defense minister thanked Brown for “his unwavering commitment to Israel's security,” including by stationing American troops in the Middle East.

Israeli airstrike kills five Palestinians in West Bank, health officials say

RAMALLAH, West Bank – Palestinian health officials say an Israeli airstrike killed five Palestinians in the northern West Bank.

The military said late Monday it had hit an “operations room” used by militants in the Nur Shams refugee camp in the town of Tulkarem. Palestinian health officials said five bodies had arrived at a nearby hospital.

Neither Palestinian health authorities nor the military could immediately determine the identity of those killed.

This is the latest act of violence in the West Bank, where around 640 Palestinians have been killed since the war between Israel and Hamas began, most of them in Israeli attacks on Palestinian towns and villages.

According to the UN, Israel continues to shrink the humanitarian zone in the Gaza Strip

UNITED NATIONS – Sixteen evacuation orders issued by the Israeli military this month have pushed Gaza residents into even smaller areas of the territory, and the latest has led to the closure of the U.N. center for humanitarian operations. But the U.N. agency for Palestine refugees, known as UNRWA, continues to provide medical care and other assistance.

As a result of these orders, several hundred thousand previously displaced Palestinians have been forced to relocate and the humanitarian zone declared by Israel has shrunk to around 11 percent of the entire Gaza Strip, Sam Rose, deputy field director of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, told reporters on Monday.

“And that’s not even 11% of the land that is truly habitable, livable and livable,” Rose said in a briefing from Gaza.

He said it was precisely in these circumstances, with no access to aid, services, water and health care, that polio had recently re-emerged in Gaza, “with a small number of cases that could spread very quickly.”

Rose said a UN campaign to vaccinate 95 percent of children under 10 was set to begin on Saturday. More than 3,000 people were involved, including 1,000 from UNRWA, the largest provider of basic health care in the Gaza Strip.

He expressed the hope that the humanitarian pauses necessary for the campaign would be respected by Israel, Hamas and other militant groups.

A senior UN official said Israel's latest evacuation order on Sunday also affected the UN operations center in Deir al-Balah, which had to be closed at short notice. The official, who asked not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the issue, said the UN was in contact with Israel to discuss the latest order and improve humanitarian operations.

Rose said UNRWA services would continue with local staff. He estimated that 15,000 Palestinians were receiving medical assistance across the Gaza Strip on Monday.

However, he stressed that it was becoming “increasingly difficult for the UN humanitarian system to operate in the Gaza Strip”.

He said an estimated one million Palestinians a month were not receiving the food they desperately needed because of obstacles at border crossings, with only about 100 trucks of aid entering Gaza each day instead of the required 500.

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Associated Press writer Edith Lederer contributed to this report.

Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has not hindered negotiations, US says

WASHINGTON — Heavy fighting between Israel and Hezbollah over the weekend did not derail Gaza ceasefire talks in Cairo as a group of “working-level” negotiators continued to discuss the technical aspects of a possible agreement, the White House said Monday.

A ceasefire is seen as the best hope of averting an even larger regional conflict, as Hezbollah seeks retaliation against Israel for the killing of Commander-in-Chief Fuad Shukr last month. Iran has meanwhile vowed revenge for the recent assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, who was killed in the Iranian capital Tehran.

“The talks in Cairo were not affected by this,” White House national security official John Kirby told reporters. “We are obviously happy to see this.”

Kirby said progress had been made during four days of high-level talks in Egypt, which ended on Sunday without a long-sought ceasefire and hostage-taking agreement.

However, the parties agreed to continue talks between lower-level officials to resolve some of the remaining differences between Israel and Hamas.

Kirby said the working group was, among other things, trying to “work out” the proposed exchange between hostages held in Gaza and Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

However, the two sides also disagree over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's demand that the Israel Defense Forces maintain a presence in two strategic corridors in the Gaza Strip: the Philadelphia Corridor along the border with Egypt and the east-west Netzarim Corridor that runs across the territory.

White House Middle East adviser Brett McGurk led the U.S. delegation at Monday's talks in Cairo but is expected to leave soon as lower-level officials seek to resolve some of the outstanding issues, Kirby said.

The talks are expected to last several days.