The head of the CIA will travel to Cairo this weekend for talks on a ceasefire and the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, a territory that has been besieged and bombed by Israel for nearly six months, US media reported today.
Washington announces this new effort following pressuring Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday, Thursday, to conclude a truce agreement “without delay”, once morest the background of pressure from the international community in the face of the humanitarian disaster in Gaza.
US intelligence director William Burns will meet with his Israeli counterpart, Mossad chief David Barnea, as well as Egyptian and Qatari officials, the New York Times reports. According to the Axios news site, they are Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdelrahman Al-Thani and Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel. In recent weeks, the negotiations taking place in Doha and Cairo have remained at a standstill.
The Gaza Strip has been the scene of a devastating war for the past nearly six months between Israel and Hamas, which erupted following the Palestinian Islamist movement’s unprecedented attack on Israeli soil on October 7. According to the latest tally announced today by the Hamas Health Ministry, 33,091 people, mostly civilians, have been killed.
The Hamas attack left 1,170 people dead on the Israeli side, mostly civilians killed on the same day, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures. More than 250 people were kidnapped during the attack and taken hostage to the Gaza Strip, where 130 remain there, among them, according to the Israeli army, 34 are dead.
Israel is under increasing international pressure due to the destruction raging in the Palestinian enclave and the dire consequences for the 2.4 million residents of the Gaza Strip, who are threatened with mass starvation.
Source: APE-MPE, AFP, Reuters
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