US calls for ‘immediate ceasefire’ in Gaza
Palestinian US Vice President Kamala Harris urged an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, upping the pressure on key ally Israel as heavy fighting raged in the Palestinian territory.
Harris’s comments on Sunday, the most forceful to date by a US administration official, came as Washington led a push to lock in a truce before Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month that begins in around one week.
Envoys from the United States, Qatar and Hamas were in Cairo for the latest round of talks over a proposal to pause the fivemonth-old war.
According to a senior US official, Israel has broadly accepted the terms, which would see stepped-up aid deliveries and the exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners.
Several sticking points reportedly remain, including Hamas’s insistence that Israeli forces entirely withdraw from the devastated territory.
“Hamas claims it wants a ceasefire. Well, there is a deal on the table,” Harris said.
Taking an unusually sharp tone, she demanded Israel “do more to significantly increase the flow of aid” into Gaza, where she said people are starving and the conditions “inhumane”.
“Given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate ceasefire.”
Pressure for a truce has mounted after attempted aid deliveries have descended into scenes of tragedy, and convoys have failed to reach families gripped by food shortages in the north.
After UN warnings of famine in Gaza, the United States started airdropping food rations on Saturday, following in the steps of Jordan and some other countries.
“It is imperative that we expand the flow of aid into Gaza to alleviate the dire humanitarian situation,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote on social media platform X on Sunday.
Harris and Blinken are both due to meet with Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz in Washington on Monday.
The former Israeli military chief, a centrist and longtime rival of Netanyahu, will also meet White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan.
A White House official said the discussions would include the need for a hostage deal, temporary ceasefire and expanding aid flows into Gaza.
Despite the latest push to halt the fighting sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, there has been no letup to the pummelling of Gaza.
Late Sunday, an AFP correspondent reported several air strikes in southern Gaza’s Rafah and Khan Yunis. Earlier in the day, two of the latest victims, twin babies Naeem and Wissam Abu Anza, were buried as their mother Rania wept in agony.
A relative, Shehda Abu Anza, said “only civilians” were in the house when it was bombed, killing 14 members of one family.
“All of them were sleeping when suddenly a missile hit and destroyed the whole house,” he told AFP as residents searched the rubble with their bare hands -- for bodies but also to salvage scarce food.
The infants were among 30,410 fatalities, most of them women and children, reported by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry since Israel launched military operations to eliminate Hamas last October.
The war began after the Palestinian militant group’s unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of around 1,160 people, according to an AFP tally of official figures.