US says truce talks on after Gaza aid worker death outcry

Palestinians carry the body of a World Central Kitchen worker at Al Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, April 2, 2024. World Central Kitchen, an aid group, says an Israeli strike that hit its workers in Gaza killed at least seven people, including several foreigners. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES — American and Israeli negotiators are expected in Cairo over the weekend in a renewed push for a ceasefire-hostage deal in a war that reaches the half-year mark on Sunday.

The attempt comes after Israel made a rare admission of wrongdoing during its war against Hamas militants in Gaza. The military said it was firing two officers for the killing of seven aid workers — most of them Westerners — in the territory where humanitarians say famine is imminent.

Israel’s admission, however, did not quell calls for an independent probe.

READ: Israel says airstrike unintentionally killed aid workers in Gaza

The killing of the workers from US-based World Central Kitchen (WCK) on April 1 led to a tense phone call between United States President Joe Biden and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Biden urged an “immediate ceasefire” and for the first time hinted at conditioning American support for Israel on curtailing the killing of civilians and improving humanitarian conditions.

The bloodiest-ever Gaza war began on October 7 with an unprecedented attack from Gaza by Hamas militants resulting in the death of 1,170 people in southern Israel, mostly civilians, Israeli figures show.

Palestinian militants also took around 250 Israeli and foreign hostages, about 130 of whom remain in Gaza, including more than 30 the army says are dead.

Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel has relentlessly bombarded the territory by air, land and sea, killing at least 33,137 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

The latest toll includes at least 46 deaths over the previous 24 hours, the ministry said on Saturday.

‘Troubling’ reports of AI

Israel’s army on Friday rejected accusations, made in independent Israeli-Palestinian magazine +972, that it has used artificial intelligence to identify targets in Gaza.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the reports “deeply troubling.”

Fears that the war could spread intensified after Iran promised to hit back for the killing of seven of its Revolutionary Guards in an air strike Monday on the consular annex of its embassy in Damascus.

Ahead of the weekend talks, Biden wrote to the leaders of Egypt and Qatar urging them to secure commitments from Hamas to “agree to and abide by a deal,” a senior administration official told AFP.

Stop-start talks have made no headway since a week-long truce in November saw the exchange of some hostages for Palestinian prisoners detained by Israel.

The White House confirmed negotiations would occur this weekend in Cairo.

A Hamas statement Saturday said its delegation would head to Cairo on Sunday.

Biden’s Thursday call with Netanyahu included discussions on “empowering his negotiators” to reach a deal, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.

The United States blames the lack of a deal on Hamas’s refusal to release sick and other vulnerable hostages. Qatar has said Israeli objections to the return of displaced Gazans are the main holdup.

Biden is under pressure over the billions of dollars in US military aid to Israel which, so far, Washington has not leveraged despite increasingly critical words about Israel’s conduct in the war.

Charities have accused Israel of blocking aid, but Israel has defended its efforts and blamed shortages on groups’ inability to distribute aid once it gets in.

The Israeli military announced it was firing two officers after finding a series of errors led to the drone strikes that killed the WCK workers as they drove south after supervising the unloading of food aid that arrived on a new sea corridor from Cyprus.

WCK said its operations in Gaza remain suspended after the attack, while other global aid groups said relief work has become almost impossible in Gaza.

‘Criminal’

The army said a commander “mistakenly assumed” Hamas had seized control of the aid vehicles, which were moving at night.

Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong said Saturday that her country had “not yet received sufficient information” from Israel about the death of Lalzawmi “Zomi” Frankcom and the other aid workers killed.

“It cannot be brushed aside and it cannot be covered over,” Wong said.

WCK said Israel “cannot credibly investigate its own failure in Gaza” and said its staff were attacked despite having “followed all proper communications procedures.”

Britain called for “utmost transparency” and a “wholly independent review,” while Poland sought a “criminal” probe.

Hours after Biden and Netanyahu spoke, Israel announced it would allow “temporary” aid deliveries through Israel’s Ashdod port and the Erez border crossing.

Germany and the European Commission said the steps should be implemented quickly.

UN chief Guterres, however, called for a “paradigm shift” rather than “scattered measures.”

‘Dying from hunger’

Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for Gaza’s Civil Defence agency, told AFP Saturday that aid reaching Gaza is “absolutely not sufficient” for its 2.4 million people, with basic necessities “extremely scarce” particularly in northern Gaza.

“Children are dying from hunger” there, he said.

Around 1.5 million Gazans are sheltering in the territory’s far south, in Rafah.

“We are ordinary citizens and human beings,” Siham Achur, 50, said in the tent where her family now stays after their home was destroyed. “Why did they bomb our house?” she asked.

They had lived there, to the north in Khan Yunis city, for 30 years, Achur said, but now all its memories “have become dust.”

On Saturday Israel’s military said warplanes had killed Akram Salamah, a “senior” militant whom it said held several positions including Hamas’s deputy chief for Khan Yunis.

Troops also recovered from Khan Yunis the body of Elad Katzir, who was abducted on October 7 and “murdered in captivity” by Islamic Jihad, a group fighting alongside Hamas, the army said.

Israel’s military paused leave for combat units and reinforced “defense systems” after the embassy strike in Syria killed the seven Iranian Guards, including a leading general.

Iran’s army chief Mohammad Bagheri on Saturday became the latest Iranian leader to vow retaliation.

Hassan Nasrallah, who heads the Iran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah movement, called the strike a “turning point.”

Hezbollah and Israeli forces have regularly exchanged deadly cross-border fire since the Gaza war began.