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Israeli defence minister says withdrawal part of preparations for attack on Rafah; Egyptian media reports progress in truce negotiations
Welcome to our ongoing live reporting of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza and the wider Middle East crisis. Here’s the latest news in brief to bring you up to speed.
Talks in Cairo aimed at brokering a truce have made “significant progress”, with more negotiations expected in the coming days, Egyptian state-linked outlet Al-Qahera reported on Monday. Al-Qahera cited a high-ranking Egyptian source to report that the progress was made on “several contentious points of agreement”.
CIA director Bill Burns and Qatari prime minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani will join the negotiators from Egypt, Israel and Hamas in Cairo, according to some media reports. An Israeli delegation will also take part in the talks, an Israeli official said. However, the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, also said on Sunday that Israel would not agree to a ceasefire until the hostages being held in Gaza were released.
Three people were killed, including a field commander in Lebanon’s Hezbollah elite forces Al Radwan, in an Israeli strike on Al Sultanya village in southern Lebanon, two security sources told Reuters early on Monday.
None of Israel’s embassies was safe any more, a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader said. Tehran viewed confrontation with Israel as a “legitimate and legal right”, Yahya Rahim Safavi was quoted by the semi-official Tasnim news agency saying on Sunday. He was speaking after a suspected Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus on 1 April for which Tehran has vowed retaliation.
At least 33,175 Palestinian people have been killed and 75,886 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, Gaza’s health ministry said. Thirty-eight were killed and 71 injured over the past 24 hours, the Hamas-run ministry said on Sunday. UN agencies and charities said the situation was “beyond catastrophic” amid a looming famine.
Iraq has agreed to send 10m litres of fuel to the Gaza Strip in support of the Palestinian people, the prime minister said. Iraq also agreed to receive wounded Palestinians from Gaza and provide them treatment in government and private hospitals, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani added in a statement on Sunday.
The White House has pushed back on comments by World Central Kitchen founder José Andrés that Israel is engaged in “war against humanity itself” following the Israeli attack that killed seven aid workers, but ruled out putting US monitors on the ground in Gaza. “There’s going to have to be some changes to the way Israeli defence forces are prosecuting these operations in Gaza to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” the White House national security communications adviser, John Kirby, told the US ABC on Sunday.
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