Gaza refugee camp 2024 People walk past a man repairing bicycles at the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on December 21, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. File picture: Eyad Baba / AFP
Image: Eyad Baba / AFP
Hamas and two other Palestinian militant groups said on Saturday that a Gaza ceasefire deal with Israel is "closer than ever", provided Israel does not impose new conditions.
"The possibility of reaching an agreement (for a ceasefire and a prisoner exchange deal) is closer than ever, provided the enemy stops imposing new conditions," Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said in a rare joint statement issued after talks in Cairo on Friday.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Saturday that at least 45,227 people have been killed during more than 14 months of war between Israel and Palestinian militants.
The toll includes 21 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 107,573 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.
Pope Francis on Saturday condemned the bombing of children in Gaza as "cruelty", a day after the territory's rescue agency said an Israeli air strike killed seven children from one family.
Gaza's civil defence rescue agency reported that an Israeli air strike killed 10 members of a family on Friday in the northern part of the territory, including seven children.
"Yesterday they did not allow the Patriarch (of Jerusalem) into Gaza as promised. Yesterday children were bombed. This is cruelty, this is not war," he told members of the government of the Holy See.
"I want to say it because it touches my heart."
Violence in the Gaza Strip continues to rock the coastal territory more than 14 months into the Israel-Hamas war, even as international mediators work to negotiate a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas Palestinian militants.
The Israeli military told AFP it had struck "several terrorists who were operating in a military structure belonging to the Hamas terrorist organisation and posed a threat to IDF troops operating in the area".
"According to an initial examination, the reported number of casualties resulting from the strike does not align with the information held by the IDF," it added.
Francis, 88, has called for peace since Hamas's unprecedented attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, and the Israeli retaliatory campaign in Gaza.
In recent weeks he has hardened his remarks against the Israeli offensive.
At the end of November, he said that "the invader's arrogance... prevails over dialogue" in "Palestine", a rare position that contrasts with the tradition of neutrality of the Holy See.
In extracts from a forthcoming book published in November, he called for a "careful" study as to whether the situation in Gaza "corresponds to the technical definition" of genocide, an accusation firmly rejected by Israel.
The Holy See has recognised the State of Palestine since 2013, with which it maintains diplomatic relations, and it supports the two-state solution.
AFP