PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES: Israeli air strikes targeted homes in southern Gaza, witnesses said on Friday, adding to what aid groups describe as an increasingly hopeless humanitarian situation despite efforts towards new truce talks.An Israeli delegation led by the head of the country’s overseas intelligence agency arrived in Paris on Friday to “unblock” talks for a ceasefire in Gaza, an Israeli official said.Mossad director David Barnea will be joined in the French capital by his counterpart at the domestic Shin Bet security agency, Ronen Bar, Israeli media reported.His trip follows what the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said was the death of more than 100 people over the previous day.Hamas wants a complete ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed the demands as “bizarre.”He has said his government is open to a pause in the fighting but has vowed to press on until “total victory” and the complete destruction of Hamas. Netanyahu is also against the release of Palestinian prisoners who took part in Hamas attacks against Israel.Israeli bombardment destroyed one house and left a gaping hole in the earth east of Rafah, on the border with Egypt, where about 1.4 million Gazans have converged in a futile search to escape the fighting.”We were sleeping in our house when we heard the sound of a missile,” said Abdul Hamid Abu el-Enein. “We rushed to the site and found people martyred and injured” in the strike, which “completely erased” the two-storey home.Witnesses reported several other houses targeted during the night, and an AFP reporter described heavy strikes in the city of Khan Yunis several kilometres (miles) to the north, as well as in Rafah itself.Israel’s military said fighting, including with drone strikes and sniper fire, continued in the western Khan Yunis area.More than four months of fighting and bombardment have flattened much of Gaza and pushed its population of around 2.4 million to the brink of famine as disease spreads, according to the United Nations.The UN humanitarian agency OCHA has blamed “limitations on the entry of aid” as well as the combat and growing insecurity for severely hampering assistance.The war started after Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack, which resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.Hamas militants also took hostages, 130 of whom remain in Gaza, including 30 presumed dead, according to Israel.
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