Israel has pressed on with its offensive in Gaza as Donald Trump claimed again to be on the brink of a breakthrough in negotiations for a ceasefire in the devastated territory.
Witnesses and medics said Israeli tanks were advancing through central and western neighbourhoods of Gaza City towards crowded coastal areas where hundreds of thousands of people are sheltering.
The Israeli military launched a long-threatened ground offensive in the north of Gaza 12 days ago after weeks of intensifying strikes on Gaza City, the biggest urban centre not under its control.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have complied with repeated orders to evacuate but many others have been unable to flee, often because they are ill, disabled, too frail or unable to afford expensive transport to safer areas.
The Israel military said the air force had struck 140 military targets across Gaza in the last 24 hours, including militants and what it described as military infrastructure.
At least five people were killed in an airstrike in the Nasser area of Gaza City, local health authorities said. Medics reported 16 more deaths in strikes on homes in central Gaza, bringing Sunday’s death toll to at least 21. The Gaza health ministry said later that Israeli fire had killed at least 77 people in the previous 24 hours.
Hamas’s armed wing urged the Israeli military to halt airstrikes temporarily and withdraw from part of Gaza City on Sunday to allow it to locate two Israeli hostages it said it had lost contact with there.
“The lives of the two prisoners are in real danger and [Israeli] forces must immediately withdraw … and halt aerial operations for 24 hours … to allow attempts to rescue the prisoners,” the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades said in a statement.
There was no immediate response from Israel, where Hamas has previously been accused of exploiting the hostages to wage “psychological warfare”.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is expected to visit the White House on Monday, has not yet reacted to Trump’s recent announcements suggesting that a peace deal is imminent. Hamas has said it has not received any new proposals.
Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform on Sunday: “We have a real chance for GREATNESS IN THE MIDDLE EAST, ALL ARE ON BOARD FOR SOMETHING SPECIAL, FIRST TIME EVER. WE WILL GET IT DONE!!!”
He promised at the start of his second term in office a quick end to the war but eight months later a resolution remains elusive.
Speaking at the UN on Friday, Netanyahu vowed to “finish the job” against Hamas, days after Britain, France and other western powers recognised a state of Palestine.
Trump has floated a 21-point proposal for an immediate ceasefire that includes the release of all hostages within 48 hours, the disarmament of Hamas, freedom for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, according to news reports in the US and Israel.
A Hamas official said the group had been briefed on the plan but had yet to receive an official offer from Egyptian and Qatari mediators.
Israel is likely to come under new international pressure in the coming days as an international aid flotilla nears its territorial waters. The flotilla stopped for several days in Greek waters for repairs but set sail on Sunday for Gaza, where activists including Greta Thunberg intend to challenge Israel’s naval blockade and deliver aid to the Palestinian territory.
On Sunday Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani,repeated a proposal made last week for the flotilla to take the aid to Cyprus for eventual distribution in Gaza by the Roman Catholic church. The flotilla, which was struck in international waters off Crete on Wednesday by drones armed with stun grenades and irritants, rejected the suggestion.
Israel has previously said it will use any means to prevent the boats from reaching Gaza.
The war in Gaza was triggered by Hamas’s 7 October 2023 incursion into Israel during which militants killed 1,219 people, mostly civilians. Of the 251 people abducted during the attack, 47 are still held in Gaza, including 25 whom the Israeli military says are dead.
The ensuing Israeli offensive in Gaza has killed more than 66,000 people, mostly civilians, and injured more than 160,000. Much of the territory has been reduced to rubble and famine has been declared in parts of its some northern areas.
In the occupied West Bank on Sunday, Israeli security forces shot dead an alleged attacker in a car-ramming incident in which an Israeli man was seriously injured at a junction near Nablus. Hamas praised the attack.
Violence has surged in the West Bank, which alongside Gaza and East Jerusalem was captured by Israel in the six-day war in 1967 and which the Palestinians want as their future state.