Israeli strikes kill over 100 in Gaza

Israeli military strikes killed more than 100 people in the Gaza Strip yesterday, Palestinian rescuers said, as the United States and Arab mediators pushed for a ceasefire deal and US President Donald Trump visited the Middle East.

Most of the victims, including women and children, were killed in Khan Younis in southern Gaza in airstrikes that hit homes and tents, they said.

The dead included local journalist Hassan Samour, who worked for the Hamas-run Aqsa radio station and was killed along with 11 family members when their home was struck, the medics said.

Hamas said in a statement that Israel was making a "desperate attempt to negotiate under cover of fire" as indirect ceasefire talks take place between Israel and Hamas, involving Trump envoys and Qatar and Egyptian mediators in Doha, reports Reuters.

Trump yesterday said he believes the United States should "take" the region and turn it into a "freedom zone."

"I have concepts for Gaza that I think are very good, make it a freedom zone, let the United States get involved, and make it just a freedom zone," said Trump.

Israel carried out the latest strikes on the day Palestinians commemorate the "Nakba", or catastrophe, when hundreds of thousands of people fled or were forced to flee their hometowns and villages during the 1948 Middle East war that gave birth to the state of Israel.

With most of the 2.3 million people in Gaza internally displaced, some residents of the tiny enclave say suffering is greater now than at the time of the Nakba.

In the occupied West Bank, Israeli troops killed five Palestinians in the village of Tammun yesterday, the mayor said, in a raid the army described as targeting buildings suspected of being used to plan terror attacks, reports AFP.

Palestinian health officials say the Israeli attacks have escalated since Trump started a visit on Tuesday to the Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates that many Palestinians had hoped he would use to push for a truce.

The latest strikes follow attacks on Gaza on Wednesday that killed at least 80 people, local health officials said.

Little has come of new indirect ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas led by Trump's envoys and Qatar and Egyptian mediators in Doha.

Hamas says it is ready to free all the remaining hostages it is holding in Gaza in return for an end to the war, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prefers interim truces, saying the war can only end once Hamas is eradicated.

"At a time when mediators are exerting intensive efforts to put the negotiation back on the right track, the Zionist occupation (Israel) responds to those efforts by military pressure on innocent civilians," the group said in a statement.

"Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants an open-ended war and he doesn't care about the fate of his hostages," it said.