Deadly fighting rocked Gaza on Wednesday (Jun 12) as US top diplomat Antony Blinken on a Middle East tour pushed for an elusive truce and hostage release deal to end the war raging since Oct 7.
Northern Israel meanwhile came under repeated barrages of rocket fire from Hezbollah in Lebanon, a day after an Israeli air strike killed a senior commander of the militant group allied with Hamas.
US Secretary of State Blinken arrived in the Gulf emirate of Qatar on his latest regional crisis tour, to promote a ceasefire deal outlined by President Joe Biden on May 31.
US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators were studying a reply Hamas issued late on Tuesday, but there was no news of a breakthrough as Hamas has insisted on a complete end to the war, a demand rejected by Israel.
Hamas and their allies Islamic Jihad said that their response calls for “a complete halt to the ongoing aggression on Gaza”.
Hamas proposed amendments including a ceasefire timeline and the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, said a source familiar with the talks.
As the Gaza war has raged for more than eight months, claiming a spiralling civilian death toll in the besieged territory, deadly violence has also flared along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.
An Israeli strike on Tuesday killed Hezbollah commander Taleb Sami Abdallah, also known as Abu Taleb and described by a Lebanese military source as the group’s “most important” fighter killed in the war so far.
On Wednesday morning, air raid sirens blared across northern Israel as three waves of about 160 rockets and missiles filled the sky.
Several were intercepted by Israeli air defences while others struck inside northern Israel sparking fires, the military said, reporting no casualties.
The Israeli military said its “artillery struck the sources of the fire” and that fighter jets bombed a launcher and four “terrorist infrastructure sites”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned last week that the army was “prepared for a very intense operation” along the Lebanese border and that “one way or another, we will restore security to the north”.
