A spokesman for Witkoff nonetheless told AFP that he disputed Hamas’ claim that the group had agreed to his proposed deal and quoted the envoy as saying “What I have seen from Hamas is disappointing and completely unacceptable”.
Fighting meanwhile raged in Gaza, where civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that an early-morning Israeli strike on the Fahmi Al-Jarjawi school, where displaced people were sheltering, killed “at least 33, with dozens injured, mostly children”.
The Israeli military said it had “struck key terrorists who were operating within a Hamas and Islamic Jihad command and control centre embedded” in the area, adding that “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians”.
Another strike killed at least 19 people in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, Bassal said.
Israel has stepped up a renewed offensive to destroy Hamas, drawing international condemnation as aid trickles in following a blockade since early March that has sparked severe food and medical shortages.
‘Senseless’ war
It has also triggered international criticism, with European and Arab leaders meeting in Spain calling for an end to the “inhumane” and “senseless” war, while humanitarian groups said the trickle of aid was not nearly enough.
Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares called for an arms embargo on Israel.
He also called for humanitarian aid to enter Gaza “massively, without conditions and without limits, and not controlled by Israel”, describing the territory as humanity’s “open wound”.
In Germany, Chancellor Friedrich Merz voiced unusually strong criticism of Israel, saying: “I no longer understand what the Israeli army is now doing in the Gaza Strip, with what goal.”
The impact on Gazan civilians “can no longer be justified”, he added.
Nevertheless, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said Berlin would continue selling weapons to Israel.
The Israeli military said on Monday that over “the past 48 hours, the (air force) struck over 200 targets throughout the Gaza Strip”.
It also said it had detected three projectiles launched from Gaza toward communities in Israel Monday, as the country prepared to celebrate Jerusalem Day, an annual event marking its capture of the city’s eastern sector in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
“Two projectiles fell in the Gaza Strip and one additional projectile was intercepted,” it said.
Later on Monday, it issued an evacuation order for areas of Khan Yunis, saying they had been the site of rocket launches.
‘The situation is devastating’
Israel last week partially eased an aid blockade on Gaza that had exacerbated widespread shortages of food and medicine.
Cogat, the Israeli defence ministry body that coordinates civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, said that “170 trucks... carrying humanitarian aid including food, medical equipment, and pharmaceutical drugs were transferred” into Gaza on Monday.
While Israel has restricted aid into Gaza, the war has made growing food next to impossible, with the UN saying on Monday just 5% of Gaza’s farmland was now useable.
A top World Health Organization official deplored Monday that none of the agency’s trucks with medical aid had been allowed to enter the Gaza Strip since Israel ended its blockade.
For more than 11 weeks, “there has been no WHO trucks entering into Gaza for medical care support”, the WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean regional director Hanan Balkhy said, adding that “the situation is devastating”.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Monday that at least 3822 people had been killed in the territory since a ceasefire collapsed on March 18, taking the war’s overall toll to 53,977, mostly civilians.
Hamas’ October 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Militants also took 251 hostages, 57 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 who the Israeli military says are dead.
-Agence France-Presse
