No peace in sight as heavy bombing kills more in Gaza

Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip killed at least 43 people on Sunday, including eight children at a water collection point, while the Palestinian death toll passed 58,000 after 21 months of war, local health officials said.

Israel and Hamas appeared no closer to a breakthrough in indirect talks meant to pause the war and free some Israeli hostages after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Washington visit last week. A new sticking point has emerged over Israeli troops ‘ deployment during a ceasefire.

Israel says it will end the war only once Hamas surrenders, disarms and goes into exile, something it refuses to do. Hamas says it is willing to free all the remaining 50 hostages, about 20 said to be alive, in exchange for an end to the war and the full withdrawal of Israeli forces.

Throughout the war in Gaza, violence has surged in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Funerals were held there on Sunday for two Palestinians, including Palestinian-American Sayfollah Musallet, killed by Israeli settlers, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

A view shows an explosion in Gaza, as seen from the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border, on Sunday. Reuters

Civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said at least 43 people were killed in the latest Israeli strikes, including 11 when a market in Gaza City was hit. Elsewhere, eight children were among the 10 victims of a drone strike at a water point in the Nuseirat refugee camp, in central Gaza, Bassal said.

In central Gaza, officials at Al Awda Hospital said it received 10 bodies after an Israeli strike on a water collection point in nearby Nuseirat. Among the dead were six children.

Ramadan Nassar, a witness who lives in the area, told The Associated Press that around 20 children and 14 adults had been lined up to get water. He said Palestinians walk some 2 kilometres to fetch water from the area.

In Nuseirat, a small boy leaned over a body bag to say goodbye to a friend. “There is no safe place,” resident Raafat Fanouna said as some people went over the rubble with sticks and bare hands.

Younis Ebrahim carries the body of his 13-year-old nephew Seraje Ebrahim, killed in an Israeli strike on a drinking water distribution point, for burial outside Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip, on Sunday. AP

Separately, health officials said an Israeli strike hit a group of citizens walking in the street on Sunday afternoon in central Gaza City, killing 11 people and injuring around 30 others.

Dr Ahmed Qandil, who specialises in general surgery, was among those killed, Gaza’s Health Ministry said. A ministry spokesperson, Zaher Al Wahidi, told the AP that Qandil had been on his way to Al Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital.

In the central town of Zawaida, an Israeli strike on a home killed nine, including two women and three children, officials at Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said.

Gaza’s Health Ministry says women and children make up more than half of the over 58,000 dead in the war. The ministry, under Gaza’s Hamas-run government, doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count. The UN and other international organisations see its figures as the most reliable statistics on war casualties.

Early on Sunday morning, a missile hit a house in Gaza City where a family had moved to after receiving an evacuation order from their home in the southern outskirts.

“My aunt, her husband and the children, are gone. What is the fault of the children who died in an ugly bloody massacre at dawn?” said Anas Matar, standing in the rubble of the building. “They came here, and they were hit. There is no safe place in Gaza,” he said.

NEW GAZA-BOUND AID BOAT: A Gaza-bound boat carrying pro-Palestinian activists and humanitarian aid left Sicily on Sunday, over a month after Israel detained and deported people aboard a previous vessel.

The Handala, operated by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, left the port of Syracuse shortly after 12:00pm, an AFP journalist saw, carrying about fifteen activists.

Several dozen people, some holding Palestinian flags and others wearing keffiyeh scarves, gathered at the port to cheer the boat’s departure with cries of “Free Palestine.”

The former Norwegian trawler — loaded with medical supplies, food, children’s equipment and medicine — will sail for about a week in the Mediterranean, covering roughly 1,800 kilometres (1,120 miles), in the hope of reaching Gaza’s coast.

People gather around the Freedom Flotilla ship "Handala" ahead of the boat's departure for Gaza at a port in Syracuse, Sicily, southern Italy, on Sunday. AFP

US-Palestinian man has been killed in an Israeli settler attack in the occupied West Bank, his family said, demanding that Washington launch a probe into his death.

Saif Al Din Kamil Abdul Karim Musalat was beaten to death on Friday in Sinjil, a village north of Ramallah, the Palestinian health ministry said.

Musalat, born and based in Florida, travelled to the West Bank last month to spend time with relatives, his family said in a statement issued by lawyer Diana Halum following the deadly attack.

The Palestinian health ministry said a second man, Mohammed Rizq Hussein Al Shalabi, 23, died after being shot during the attack and “left to bleed for hours.”

Agencies