Hamas team heads to Cairo talks as Rafah braces for Israeli assault
Negotiations to pause the Israel-Hamas war and free the remaining hostages headed into a second day in Cairo on Wednesday, as displaced Gazans braced for an expected Israeli assault on their last refuge of Rafah.
A Hamas source told AFP that a delegation was headed to the Egyptian capital to meet Egyptian and Qatari mediators, after Israeli negotiators held talks with the mediators on Tuesday.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an outspoken critic of Israel’s conduct of the Gaza war, was also due in Cairo on Wednesday for talks with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
CIA director William Burns had joined Tuesday’s talks with David Barnea, head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service, which Egyptian media said had been mostly “positive”.
US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby described the negotiations as “constructive and moving in the right direction”.
Mediators are racing to secure a pause to the fighting before Israel proceeds with a full-scale ground incursion into the Gaza Strip’s far-southern city of Rafah, where more than 1.4 million Palestinians are trapped. The potential for mass civilian casualties has triggered urgent appeals, even from close allies, for Israel to hold off sending troops into the last major population centre they have yet to enter in the four-month war.
The Hamas attack that launched the war resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
At least 28,576 people, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israel’s response, according to the latest health ministry figures.
Around 130 of an estimated 250 people taken hostage by Palestinian militants during the attack are believed to remain in Gaza. Israel says 29 of them are presumed dead.
On Wednesday, around 100 representatives of the Gaza hostages flew to The Hague to file a “crimes against humanity” charge against Hamas leaders at the International Criminal Court.
“We are the families of the hostages who have gone through and are still going through this terrible hell,” said Haim Rubinstein, from the campaign group Hostages and Missing Families Forum.