Gaza rescuers say 80 killed in Israeli strikes amid hostage release talks

Gaza rescuers said at least 80 people were killed in Israeli bombardment across the Palestinian territory on Wednesday, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to US envoy Steve Witkoff about the release of hostages.

Negotiations for the release of the captives held in Gaza have been ongoing, with the latest talks taking place in the Qatari capital Doha, where US President Donald Trump was visiting on Wednesday.

Netanyahu’s office said the premier had discussed with Witkoff and his negotiating team “the issue of the hostages and the missing”.

Witkoff later said Trump had “a really productive conversation” with the Qatari emir about a Gaza deal, adding that “we are moving along and we have a good plan together”.

Fighting meanwhile raged in Gaza, where civil defence official Mohammed al-Mughayyir told AFP 80 people had been killed by Israeli bombardment since dawn, including 59 in the north.

AFP footage from the aftermath of a strike in Jabalia, northern Gaza, showed mounds of rubble and twisted metal from collapsed buildings. Palestinians, including young children, picked through the debris in search of belongings.

Footage of mourners in northern Gaza showed women in tears as they kneeled next to bodies wrapped in bloodstained white shrouds.

“It’s a nine-month-old baby. What did he do?” one of them cried out.

Hasan Moqbel, a Palestinian who lost relatives, told AFP: “Those who don’t die from air strikes die from hunger, and those who don’t die from hunger die from lack of medicine.”

Israel’s military on Wednesday urged residents in part of a Gaza City neighbourhood to evacuate, warning that its forces would “attack the area with intense force”.

‘Unjustifiable’

From the occupied West Bank, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said Wednesday he favoured a “ceasefire at any price” in Gaza, accusing Netanyahu of wanting to continue the war “for his own reasons”.

In a letter addressed to Netanyahu and sent to Trump and Witkoff, 67 former hostages held by Hamas in Gaza urged for a “negotiated deal” for the return of all the captives still held there.

“The majority of Israeli society wants the hostages home — even at the cost of halting military operations,” the letter said.

Mohammad Awad, an emergency doctor in northern Gaza’s Indonesian Hospital, told AFP that supply shortages meant his department could not properly handle the flow of wounded and that “the bodies of the martyrs are lying on the ground in the hospital corridors”.

“There are not enough beds, no medicine, and no means for surgical or medical treatment, which leaves doctors unable to save many of the injured who are dying due to lack of care”, he said.

Israel imposed an aid blockade on the Gaza Strip on March 2 after talks to prolong a January 19 ceasefire broke down.

The resulting shortages of food and medicine have aggravated an already dire situation in the Palestinian territory, although Israel has dismissed UN warnings that a potential famine looms.

Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Wednesday urged all sides to avert a famine in Gaza, while Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said the humanitarian situation in Gaza was “ever more dramatic and unjustifiable”.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called for a ceasefire and “unimpeded humanitarian access” to the territory.

A US-led initiative for aid distribution under Israeli military security drew international criticism as it appears to sideline the United Nations and existing aid organisations, and would overhaul current humanitarian structures in Gaza.

‘Full force’

Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said the plan would make “aid conditional on forced displacement”, adding that Israel was creating “conditions for the eradication of Palestinian lives in Gaza”.

Israel resumed major operations across Gaza on March 18, with officials later talking of retaining a long-term presence in the Palestinian territory.

Following a short pause in air strikes during the release of US-Israeli hostage Edan Alexander on Monday, Israel resumed its pounding of Gaza.

Netanyahu said on Monday that the military would enter Gaza “with full force” in the coming days. He added that his government was working to find countries willing to take in Gaza’s population.

The Israeli government approved plans to expand the offensive earlier this month, and spoke of the “conquest” of Gaza. Of the 251 hostages taken during Hamas’s October 2023 attack, 57 remain in Gaza, including 34 the military says are dead.

The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 52,928 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to figures from the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry, which the United Nations considers reliable.