Israeli strike kills at least 17 Palestinians in central Gaza: health officials

At least 17 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded in an Israeli strike in the central Gaza town of Zawayda on Saturday, health officials said, as Israel issued new evacuation orders, citing Hamas rocket fire nearby. 

Israel also announced the names of two soldiers Israeli media reported were killed on Saturday afternoon when a roadside bomb exploded in the central Gaza Strip, and an air strike in the occupied West Bank that it said killed two senior Hamas fighters involved in the killing of an Israeli.

The violence occurred before US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was expected to land in Israel on Sunday and meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, amid stepped-up diplomatic efforts to conclude a deal to end the fighting between Israel and the fighter Islamist group and free Israeli hostages.

Most of the people killed in Zawayda were from the same family and they included eight children and four women, according to health officials in the Hamas-administered enclave. 

"They were asleep in their beds, kids and babies, then three missiles targeted their place," said Abu Ahmed Hassan, a neighbour. The owner of the house was a known merchant, he said. "There are no military activities here at all," he added.      

The Israeli military said in response it had struck fighter targets in an area from which rockets were fired at its troops. It said the incident was under review.

Israel's military spokesperson posted instructions in Arabic on X on Saturday for people in parts of central Gaza, including in the Maghazi district near Zawayda, to evacuate to a designated humanitarian zone. 

Reuters could not immediately verify whether Zawayda was  among the places ordered to evacuate and whether people there had received the military's instructions. Residents said thousands were streaming out of Maghazi.   

On Friday, two sections of the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis within what Israel has designated as a humanitarian zone were deemed dangerous by the military, which ordered people to evacuate them, saying fighters had been regularly firing rockets from there. 

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Friday's orders, which also included other areas of the enclave outside the humanitarian zones, had affected around 170,000 displaced people.

"This is one of the largest evacuation orders affecting the zone to date and it shrinks the size of the so-called 'humanitarian area' to about 41 square kilometres, or 11 per cent of the total area of the Gaza Strip," an OCHA report said.  

In the central part of the enclave, residents said Israeli tanks advanced further on Saturday into the eastern area of Deir al-Balah, an area they had not entered before, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are sheltering. 

The Israeli military said that since Friday its forces had killed dozens of fighters, including some who had fired rockets from central and southern Gaza.        

Most of Gaza's 2.3 million population has been displaced by the 10-month-old Israeli offensive, which has laid waste to much of the enclave.

Another Israeli airstrike on a car in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin on Saturday killed at least two more Palestinians, one an 18-year-old, the Palestinian health ministry said.

CEASEFIRE TALKS

Gaza ceasefire talks in Doha, mediated by the US, Qatar and Egypt, were due to resume next week.

A statement from Netanyahu's office said Israel's negotiating team had expressed "cautious optimism" on the possibility of advancing a deal "in accordance with the updated American proposal (based on the May 27th framework), including components acceptable to Israel."

US President Joe Biden said on Friday, following two days of talks in Doha, that efforts to reach a deal were now in sight, although he warned that negotiations were "far from over".

Hamas spokesman Jihad Taha told Al Jazeera TV on Saturday that Israel had added conditions in the ceasefire talks and accused Netanyahu of using these to hinder the efforts.

Asked about Blinken's visit to the region, he said the group did not rely on the US as it has been biassed towards Israel.

Another Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, told Al Jazeera that Israel wanted the right to return to the fight even if a prisoner exchange was agreed. "They want to have the right to attack Gaza whenever they want," he said.

The war was triggered on Oct. 7 when Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel's subsequent military campaign has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to Gaza health authorities. Israel has lost more than 330 soldiers in Gaza since its ground operations there began after Oct. 7, and says at least a third of the Palestinian dead are fighters.