Israeli attacks have killed at least 12 people in Gaza overnight, while Israel’s Foreign Minister said that Israel has accepted a Gaza ceasefire proposal from US President Donald Trump.
Speaking at a press conference in Budapest, Gideon Saar said that Israel was ready to accept a full deal ending the war that would include the release of hostages and Hamas laying down its arms.
Yesterday, US President Donald Trump suggested a Gaza deal could come soon to secure the release of all the hostages held by Hamas.
It comes as Israeli attacks killed at least 12 people across Gaza overnight, including a journalist for Palestinian media, medics said.
The slain journalist was named as Osama Balousha.
Nearly 250 journalists have been killed in Gaza during the war, according to Palestinian authorities, making it by far the world’s deadliest war for news media in living memory.
Israel bars all foreign reporters from Gaza, so all journalists killed there have been Palestinians.
Palestinian officials say Israel has deliberately targeted some journalists, which Israel denies.
Six more Palestinians, including two children, have died of malnutrition and starvation in Gaza in the past 24 hours, the territory’s health ministry said, raising deaths from such causes to at least 393 people, most in the past two months.
Global hunger monitor IPC determined this month that an entirely man-made famine is currently taking place in Gaza, while UN human rights chief Volker Turk said the famine was the direct result of Israeli government policies.
Israel said it would ramp up airstrikes on Gaza in a “mighty hurricane”, to serve as a last warning to Hamas that it will destroy the enclave unless fighters accept a demand from US President Donald Trump to free all hostages and surrender.
Residents said Israeli forces bombed Gaza City from the air and blew up armoured vehicles in its streets.
Hamas said it was studying the latest US ceasefire proposal, delivered yesterday with a warning from Mr Trump that it was the Hamas’s “last chance”.
“A mighty hurricane will hit the skies of Gaza City today, and the roofs of the terror towers will shake,” Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz wrote on X.
Mr Katz said it was a “final warning” to Hamas, calling on them to release the hostages and lay down weapons, “or Gaza will be destroyed” and Hamas will be “annihilated”.
According to a senior Israeli official, the latest US proposal for Gaza calls for Hamas to return all 48 remaining living and dead hostages on the first day of a ceasefire, during which negotiations would be held to end the war.
Hamas said in a statement it was committed to releasing all hostages with a “clear announcement of an end to the war” and withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
Israel launched a major assault last month on Gaza City, where hundreds of thousands of residents are living in the ruins having returned after the most intense fighting of the war’s early weeks nearly two years ago.
Residents of Gaza City said Israeli forces pounded several districts from the air and ground, and detonated decommissioned armoured vehicles laden with explosives, destroying clusters of homes in the Sheikh Radwan, Zeitoun, and Tuffah neighbourhoods.
The Israeli military has been targeting and destroying high-rise buildings in Gaza in recent days.
The UN estimates nearly one million people remain in and around Gaza city, where it declared a famine last month.
UN condemns Israel’s mass killing of civilians in Gaza
Meanwhile, the United Nations human rights chief condemned Israel for its “mass killing” of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and “hindering of sufficient lifesaving aid”, saying the country had a case to answer before the International Court of Justice.
Volker Turk, who heads the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), stopped short of describing the Gaza war as an unfolding genocide, as hundreds of UN staff had urged him to do.
But in his opening address to the 60th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Mr Turk expressed horror at what he called “the open use of genocidal rhetoric” and “disgraceful dehumanisation” of Palestinians by senior Israeli officials.
“Israel’s mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza; its infliction of indescribable suffering and wholesale destruction; its hindering of sufficient lifesaving aid and the ensuing starvation of civilians; its killing of journalists; and its commission of war crime upon war crime, are shocking the conscience of the world,” said Mr Turk.
“Israel has a case to answer before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the evidence continues to mount,” Mr Turk said, referring to the ICJ’s ruling in January that Israel had a legal obligation to prevent acts of genocide.
Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, including its expansion of offensives in Gaza, is illegal under international law.
Last week, the world’s biggest academic association of genocide scholars passed a resolution saying the legal criteria have been met to establish Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Israeli attacks have killed at least 64,300 Palestinians, mostly civilians, since October 2023, according to figures from the health ministry in Gaza that the United Nations considers reliable.
The current stage of the war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
