GAZA: The Zionist entity launched deadly strikes Sunday on the Gaza Strip as its war against Hamas entered its 10th month, with diplomatic efforts underway to secure a ceasefire and captive release deal. Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, an ally of Palestinian militant group Hamas, fired rocket salvoes at the Zionist entity, in the latest cross-border clashes that have sparked fears of a full-scale war. Efforts towards a truce continued with US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators hoping to halt the Gaza war, which has caused mass civilian casualties and devastated swathes of the coastal territory.

Egypt’s state-linked Al-Qahera News said Cairo was “hosting (Zionist) and American delegations to discuss the outstanding points”, citing an unnamed high-level official source. Mediators were in contact with Hamas amid “intensive Egyptian meetings this week with all parties”, said the news report late Saturday, without elaborating. A top Hamas official told AFP on Sunday that the Palestinian group was ready to discuss a captive deal and an end to the Gaza war without a “complete and permanent ceasefire”.

The Zionist entity has said it would send a delegation to continue talks with Qatari mediators, though a government spokesman said Friday there were still “gaps” with Hamas. US President Joe Biden announced a plan in late May that included an initial six-week truce and the exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners held in the Zionist entity.

Talks quickly stalled but a US official said Thursday that a new proposal from Hamas “moves the process forward and may provide the basis for closing the deal”. Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan told AFP that US mediators “welcomed” the group’s latest proposals “and passed them on to the (Zionist) side”. “Now the ball is in the (Zionist) court,” said Hamdan. In the Zionist entity, anti-government protesters demanding a captive release deal blocked roads in Tel Aviv as they marked a nationwide “disruption day”.

The fighting and bombardment in besieged Gaza raged on unabated, with medics and emergency services in the Hamas-run territory reporting at least 15 deaths in several strikes on Sunday. Among them were Ehab Al-Ghussein, the Hamas-appointed deputy minister of labor whose wife and children were killed in May, and three other people killed in a strike at a church-run school in western Gaza City sheltering families, Hamas media and the civil emergency service said. The Palestinian Red Crescent said two children were among six dead when a central Gaza house was hit, and paramedics reported nine fatalities in two strikes on Gaza City. An AFP correspondent said Zionist drones were firing in Gaza City’s Shujaiya district, which has been largely evacuated and rocked by intense battles for nearly two weeks.

The Zionist military offensive has killed at least 38,153 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to data from the territory’s health ministry. The health ministry toll includes 16 people killed Saturday in a strike on a UN-run school in the central Nuseirat refugee camp that was sheltering displaced Palestinians. The war has uprooted nearly all Gazans, left almost 500,000 people enduring “catastrophic” hunger and shuttered most hospitals, UN agencies say.

Dr Muhammad Salha, acting director of Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia, said severe shortages amid Israel’s siege of Gaza left the facility with “no fuel”. “The situation is very difficult,” he said. “We have postponed many scheduled operations due to the lack of fuel.”

The Zionist entity and Iran-backed Hezbollah have exchanged almost daily cross-border fire since the Gaza war began. The attacks and rhetoric have escalated in recent weeks, sparking fears of a wider conflagration. While the exchanges have been largely restricted to the border areas, the Zionist entity has repeatedly struck deep inside eastern Lebanon, including on Saturday in an attack that killed a Hezbollah operative.

Early on Sunday, air raid sirens sounded across the Zionist entity’s north and the military reported that 20 rockets were fired, with some intercepted. Hezbollah said it had targeted a Zionist army base west of Tiberias “in response to the... assassination” carried out the day before. Zionist police said one person was wounded by shrapnel in Kfar Zeitim near Tiberias, around 30 km from the Lebanese border. Hezbollah later claimed a second barrage of rockets targeting a military base elsewhere in the Zionist entity. – Agencies