The US government said it was “continuing to work hard” to reach an agreement between Israel and the Islamist movement Hamas to release the hostages and mark a pause in the fighting.
“We have not yet reached an agreement, but we continue to work hard” to do so, White House National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson wrote on the social network X (formerly Twitter) on Saturday.
The spokesman’s response came after the Washington Post newspaper reported that an agreement had been reached between the warring sides that provided for the release of hostages in exchange for a five-day break in the fighting.
On the ground, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that Al-Shifa hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip targeted by Israeli attacks, had become a “death zone” and ordered the withdrawal of this establishment.
According to the Israeli army, which raided the hospital on Wednesday morning, the hospital houses a Hamas shelter installed in a network of tunnels. The Palestinian Islamic movement denied this.
As the war enters its 44th day this Sunday, “the Israeli army continues to expand operations in new areas of the Gaza Strip,” he announced, noting that it had carried out operations on Saturday in the Jabaliya and Zaytun areas, in the north of the territory.
On October 7, the Islamist movement Hamas launched a surprise attack on southern Israel with the launch of thousands of rockets and the incursion of armed militiamen.
In response, Israel declared war on Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007 and is classified as terrorist by the EU and the United States, by bombing several of the group’s infrastructure facilities in Gaza and imposing a total siege of the territory, where the water supply is shut off. supplies, fuel and electricity.
Israeli bombings from the air, land and sea caused between 16,000 and 12,000 deaths, mostly civilians, in the Gaza Strip, according to Hamas data.
The UN indicated that more than two-thirds of the Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million residents had been displaced by the war, with the majority fleeing south.
Source: DN
