Israeli-Palestinian violence continues as diplomats push to restore calm

Gaza

ISRAELI air strikes killed 33 Palestinians, including 13 children, in Gaza early on Sunday, Gaza health officials said, and militants fired rockets into Israel as hostilities stretched into a seventh day.

The pre-dawn attacks were on houses in the centre of Gaza City, health officials said. The death toll in Gaza jumped to 181, including 52 children, since the fighting erupted last Monday. In Israel, 10 people including two children have been killed in rocket attacks by Hamas and other militant groups.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the UN Security Council on Sunday that hostilities in Israel and Gaza were "utterly appalling" and called for an immediate end to fighting. He said the United Nations is "actively engaging all sides toward an immediate ceasefire" and called on them "to allow mediation efforts to intensify and succeed".

Both Israel and Hamas, the Islamist group that runs the enclave, said they would continue their cross-border fire after Israel destroyed a 12-storey building in Gaza City on Saturday that housed the US Associated Press (AP) and Qatar-based Al Jazeera media operations. The Israel military said the al-Jala building was a legitimate military target, containing Hamas military offices, and that it had given advance warnings to civilians to get out of the building. The AP condemned the attack, and asked Israel to put forward evidence.

In what Hamas called a reprisal for Israel's destruction of the al-Jala building, Hamas fired 120 rockets overnight, the Israeli military said.

In a burst of air strikes early on Sunday, the Israeli military said it struck the home of Yehya Al-Sinwar, who heads the political and military wings of Hamas in Gaza, in the southern Gaza City of Khan Younis.

There has been a flurry of US diplomacy in recent days to try to quell the violence. President Joe Biden's envoy, Hady Amr, arrived in Israel on Friday for talks. Mr Biden spoke to both Mr Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas late on Saturday, the White House said.

But any mediation is complicated by the fact that the United States and most Western powers do not talk to Hamas, which they regard as a terrorist organisation. REUTERS