Gaza conflict Israeli strikes killed 33 people death toll passes 920 mediators hope any truce

Gaza conflict Israeli strikes killed 33 people death toll passes 920 mediators hope any truce. U.S. Secretary of State pressed regional leaders to nail down.

Gaza ceasefire as the civilian death toll soared, and further violence flared between Israelis and Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.

Mediators hope any truce in the Gaza Strip can coincide with a Muslim festival that starts next week.

And looking to overcome seemingly irreconcilable demands from Israel and Hamas-led Islamist fighters, locked in conflict since July 8.

As the diplomacy continued, so did the fighting.

Gaza officials said Israeli strikes killed 33 people on Friday, including the head of media operations for Hamas ally Islamic Jihad and his son.

They put the number of Palestinian deaths in 18 days of conflict at 822, most of them civilians.

Gaza conflict Israeli strikes killed 33 people death toll passes 920 mediators hope any truce.

Gaza conflict Israeli strikes killed 33 people death toll passes 920 mediators hope any truce.

Gaza conflict Israeli strikes killed 33 people death toll passes 920 mediators hope any truce.

Militants fired a barrage of rockets out of Gaza, triggering sirens across much of southern.

And central Israel, including at the country’s main airport.

No injuries were reported, with the Iron Dome interceptor system knocking out many of the missiles.

Gaza conflict Israeli strikes killed 33 people death toll passes 920 mediators hope any truce.

The Gaza turmoil stoked tensions in the nearby occupied West Bank, where U.S.-backed Palestinian President governs in uneasy coordination with Israel.

Medics said five Palestinians were killed in separate incidents near the cities of Nablus and Hebron.

Including one shooting that witnesses blamed on an apparent Jewish settler.

On Thursday night, 10,000 demonstrators marched in solidarity with Gaza near the Palestinian administrative capital Ramallah.

Ascale recalling mass revolts of the past.

Protesters surged against an Israeli army checkpoint, throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails.

And Palestinian medics said one was shot dead and 200 wounded when troops opened fire.

Israel said an army reservist killed in Gaza, bringing to 34 the number of soldiers lost in a ground advance.

It says aims to destroy dozens of cross-border tunnels used by Hamas to threaten its southern farming villages and army bases.

Gaza conflict Israeli strikes killed 33 people death toll passes 920 mediators hope any truce.

Gaza conflict Israeli strikes killed 33 people death toll passes 920 mediators hope any truce.

Gaza Conflict ,Death Toll Passes 833.

It also announced that a soldier unaccounted for after an ambush in Gaza six days ago was definitely dead.

Although his body had not been recovered.

Hamas said on Sunday it had captured the man, but did not release a photograph of him.

Gaza conflict Israeli strikes killed 33 people death toll passes 920 mediators hope any truce.

Three civilians have also been killed in Israel by rockets from Gaza – the kind of attack that surged last month.

Amid Hamas anger at a crackdown on its activists in the West Bank, prompting the July 8 launch of the Israeli offensive.

NEGOTIATIONS.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his security cabinet on Friday to discuss a limited humanitarian truce.

Under which Palestinian movement would be freed up to allow in aid and for the dead and wounded to be recovered.

A Palestinian official close to the negotiations said Turkey and Qatar proposed a 7-day halt to the fighting.

Which had been relayed to Israel by Kerry while Hamas considered it.

An Israeli official acknowledged that the proposal had been received.

But said any decision by the Netanyahu government would likely come after Hamas delivered its own response.

Gaza Conflict ,Death Toll Passes 833.

Israel insists that, even if such a ceasefire agreed.

Its army will continue digging up tunnels along Gaza’s eastern frontier, a mission that could take between one and two weeks.

Netanyahu has said a truce should also lead to the eventual stripping of Gaza’s rocket arsenals – something Hamas rules out.

Gaza conflict Israeli strikes killed 33 people death toll passes 920 mediators hope any truce.

“We must stop the rocket launches.

How this done – whether through occupying (Gaza), or broadening (the operation), or (international) guarantees.

Or anything else, I have to see it with my own eyes,” said police minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch.

Gaza conflict Israeli strikes killed 33 people death toll passes 920 mediators hope any truce.

Gaza conflict Israeli strikes killed 33 people death toll passes 920 mediators hope any truce.

The rockets have sent Israelis regularly rushing to shelters and dented the economy despite Iron Dome’s high rate of success.

A Hamas rocket intercepted near Ben Gurion Airport on Tuesday prompted the U.S.

Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to halt American commercial flights to Israel’s main international gateway. Some European carriers followed suit.

Gaza Conflict ,Death Toll Passes 833.

Jolted by the blow at the height of an already stagnant summer tourism season, Israel persuaded U.S. authorities to lift the flight ban.

After which the European aviation regulator removed its own advisory against flying to Ben Gurion.

In the second such salvo in as many days, Hamas said it fired three rockets at the airport.

An apparent bid to cripple operations there again.

Gaza conflict Israeli strikes killed 33 people death toll passes 920 mediators hope any truce.

There was no word of impacts at Ben Gurion, whose passenger hall emptied at the sound of sirens.

HAMAS WANTS GAZA OPENED UP.

The Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal  on Wednesday voiced support for a humanitarian truce.

But only if Israel eased restrictions on Gaza’s 1.8 million people.

Hamas wants Egypt to open up its border with Gaza, too, and demands that Israel release hundreds of prisoners.

Rounded up in the West Bank last month following the kidnap and killing of three Jewish seminary students.

Such concessions appear unlikely, however, as both Israel and Egypt consider Hamas a security threat.

One Cairo official said next week’s Eid al-Fitr festival, which concludes Ramadan, a possible date for a truce.

But U.S. officials  circumspect on progress made by Kerry, whose mediation involved Egypt, Turkey, Qatar and Abbas.

As Washington, like Israel and the European Union, won’t deal directly with Hamas, which it considers a terrorist group.

Gaza Conflict ,Death Toll Passes 833.

“Secretary on the phone all morning, and he will remain in close touch with leaders in the region over the course of the morning.

Gaza conflict Israeli strikes killed 33 people death toll passes 920 mediators hope any truce.

As he continues work on achieving a ceasefire,” said a senior U.S. State Department official in Cairo.

Which has been Kerry’s base over the last four days as he has tried to bring about a temporary end to the conflict.

On Thursday, a U.S. official said Kerry seeking a way of bridging gaps between Israel and Hamas.

But that the diplomat would not stay in the region “for an indefinite amount of time”.

More than 140,000 Palestinians displaced in Gaza by the fighting, many of them seeking shelter.

In buildings run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

An UNRWA spokesman said the agencytried in vain to arrange with Israel to evacuate civilians from the school.

In northern Beit Hanoun before it shelled on Thursday.

Gaza conflict Israeli strikes killed 33 people death toll passes 920 mediators hope any truce.

Gaza conflict Israeli strikes killed 33 people death toll passes 920 mediators hope any truce.

Scores of crying families who living in the school ran with their children to a hospital a few hundred meters away.

Where the victims treated. Laila Al-Shinbari, who at the school when it hit.

Told Reuters that families gathered in the courtyard expecting to  evacuated shortly in a Red Cross convoy.

Gaza conflict Israeli strikes killed 33 people death toll passes 920 mediators hope any truce.

“All of us sat in one place when suddenly four shells landed on our heads … Bodies  on the ground, (there was) blood and screams.

My son dead, and all my relatives  wounded, including my other kids,” she said, weeping.

(Additional reporting by Ori Lewis in Jerusalem, Noah Browning in Gaza, Arshad Mohammed, Yasmine Saleh.

And Shadia Nasralla in Cairo; Writing by Dan Williams and Crispian Balmer; Editing by Will Waterman and Giles Elgood).