Scores of Gazans killed after Qatar says Israel approved ceasefire plan

Scores of Palestinians have been killed in overnight Israeli aggression in the besieged Gaza Strip, after mediator Qatar said Tel Aviv had approved a proposal to pause its war on the besieged territory. 

The health ministry in Gaza said 105 people were killed overnight from Thursday to Friday, as Israeli raids and shelling of Khan Younis continued. 

The southern Gaza’s main city has recently become the epicenter of relentless strikes and intense fighting between Palestinian resistance combatants and Israeli forces.  

One of the Israeli strikes targeted a residential building near the European Hospital in Khan Younis overnight, officials said.

Nearly four months of the Israeli invasion have rendered Gaza “uninhabitable”, according to the UN, while an Israeli siege has led to dire shortages of food, water, fuel and medicines. 

The humanitarian crisis, coupled with soaring civilian casualties, has spurred increasing international calls for a ceasefire.

Qatar said Thursday that a truce proposal made in Paris “has been approved by the Israeli side and now we have an initial positive confirmation from the Hamas side”.

A source close to Hamas, however, was quoted as saying that there was no agreement on the framework of the agreement yet.

“The factions have important observations and the Qatari statement is rushed and not true,” AFP quoted the unnamed source as saying. 

Israel’s minister of military affairs Yoav Gallant said Friday the regime’s forces will continue their Gaza invasion to Rafah, despite the huge numbers of Palestinian civilians there who have no where else to go.

“We will continue until the end, there is no other way,” he said in a post on X, formerly Twitter. 

More than 27,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 7 as Israel intensifies its strikes on the besieged strip.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (RCS) said the Israeli military continues to encircle al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis.

Raed al-Nems, a spokesman for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, said Israeli forces are still “targeting every moving object in al-Amal Hospital, which houses 100 medical staff and nurses in addition to 7,000 displaced people.”

He noted that bodies are lying outside the hospital, while medical staff can’t carry them because of the siege.

According to the RCS, Naeem Yusuf Hasan, 49, was killed by an Israeli sniper while he was attempting to help a wounded volunteer near the southern gate of the hospital.

Officials said the hospital is completely encircled from all sides, with Israeli special forces and snipers positioned on the roofs of nearby buildings.

Amid the siege on al-Amal hospital, the RCS said Thursday there are “critical shortages in medical supplies, medications, and fuel” as well as a “severe shortage of available food for staff, patients, and displaced individuals, leading to reducing meals to one per day to preserve remaining supplies.”

On Wednesday, RCS medical teams performed funeral prayer at al-Amal Hospital after a 75-year-old woman and a 45-day-old girl died because of a lack of oxygen at the hospital.

The health ministry in Gaza says more than 30,000 displaced Palestinians in schools near Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis have no food or water.

The ministry urged the United Nations and its institutions to urgently intervene to provide aid to the displaced people.