CAIRO: Zionist strikes across the Gaza Strip killed at least 53 Palestinians overnight and on Tuesday, medics said, as Zionist tanks pushed into areas in central and southern parts of the enclave. A Zionist airstrike killed at least 25 people in Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, where Zionist forces have operated since October, and injured dozens of others in a multi-floored building, medics said.

The Palestinian Civil Emergency said most of those killed were from the same family, including women and children. Images posted online showed the bodies lined up in a single mass grave in the town. Another airstrike on a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza killed at least seven people. It wounded several others, medics and the Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said, while another killed two people in Rafah south of the enclave.

In Deir Al-Balah near the coast, Zionist naval forces detained six Palestinian fishermen who tried to sail into the Mediterranean Sea earlier on Tuesday, according to residents. More than 44,700 Palestinians have been killed in the 14-month-old Zionist military campaign on Gaza, Gaza health authorities said.

Ceasefire efforts by Arab mediators Egypt and Qatar, backed by the United States, have failed to find agreement, but recent signs of optimism among Zionist and Palestinian officials have suggested a deal to end the war could be closer. On Monday night, Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hamas’ increasing isolation after the downfall of Syria’s Bashar Al-Assad could open the door to a deal to return captives but it was too early to say if efforts would succeed.

On Tuesday, a Hamas official declined to disclose the content of negotiations but told Reuters mediators had recently stepped up their efforts, citing the group’s willingness to show the flexibility needed “to end the aggression on our people”. A Palestinian official with knowledge of the mediation effort said Hamas had asked other Gaza factions to list the names of Zionist and foreign captives in their custody, whether dead or alive, signaling potential progress in the talks.

Hamas wants a deal that ends the war and sees the release of Zionist and foreign hostages held captive in Gaza as well as Palestinians jailed by the Zionist entity, while Netanyahu has vowed the war can only end once Hamas is eradicated. — Reuters