GAZA/DOHA (AFP) - A framework to halt the Gaza fighting and for hostage releases is to be relayed to Hamas, mediator Qatar said Monday (Jan 29), as a bitter row flared around the UN aid agency for Palestinians.
While deadly fighting again rocked Gaza, fears mounted of a widening regional conflict after Israel's top ally Washington vowed to respond to an attack that killed three US troops in Jordan.
Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip killed 215 more people within 24 hours, including 20 members of one family, said the health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory.
Ground forces backed by tanks have focused on the main southern city of Khan Younis, the hometown of Hamas's Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar.
Sinwar's office, military sites and "a significant rocket manufacturing facility" were raided by troops, the army said.
Since the war began, the Israeli military "eliminated over 2,000 terrorists above and below ground" in the Khan Younis area, army spokesman Daniel Hagari said Monday, without offering evidence.
With Gazans facing dire humanitarian conditions after nearly four months of war, 20 international aid organisations said they were "outraged" at the suspension of funding to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.
Several top donors including the United States and Germany have halted funds over Israeli claims that some UNRWA staff were involved in Hamas's Oct 7 attack that sparked the fighting.
An UNRWA source told AFP the suspension of funding had yet to have an effect on the ground.
But if donors "insist on stopping their support for UNRWA, this will be a major disaster", said the source on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.
In the latest efforts to broker a new truce, CIA chief William Burns met top Israeli, Egyptian and Qatari officials in Paris on Sunday.
Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, who attended the talks, said "good progress" had been made and the parties were "hoping to relay this proposal to Hamas and to get them to a place where they engage positively and constructively in the process".
"DIE OF HUNGER"
Sheikh Mohammed confirmed that the framework, which he said "might lead to a ceasefire permanently in the future", includes a phased truce that would see women and children hostages released first, with aid also entering besieged Gaza.
A senior Hamas official, Taher al-Nunu, said it wanted a "complete and comprehensive ceasefire, not a temporary truce", though it was not immediately clear whether Hamas officials had received the Qatari text.
Once the fighting stopped, Nunu told AFP, "the rest of the details can be discussed" including hostage releases.
Israel has called the Paris talks "constructive" but pointed to "significant gaps which the parties will continue to discuss", while US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, "there's a lot of work that has to be done".
The war was sparked by the Hamas attack which resulted in about 1,140 deaths, mostly civilians, in southern Israel, according to an AFP tally of official figures.
Militants also seized 250 hostages, of whom Israel says around 132 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 28 dead captives.
Israel's relentless military offensive has killed at least 26,637 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the territory's health ministry.
Hundreds of thousands have been displaced in Gaza and relied on scarce aid amid an Israeli siege, but there were fears of further shortages amid the intensifying rift between Israel and the UN agency.
The European Union and other donors have urged an investigation into the allegations against UNRWA staff, while UN chief Antonio Guterres has pleaded for continued financial support to meet "dire needs".
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz cancelled a meeting with UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini, and said on social media: "Supporters of terrorism are not welcome here."
In the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where 1.5 million displaced people have taken refuge, some told AFP the UN support was a lifeline.
"We live on aid from UNRWA," said Sabah Musabih, 50. "If it stopped, we would die of hunger."
"THE WORLD NEEDS TO KNOW"
A UN official visiting Israel urged victims of alleged sexual assault during Hamas's attack to "break your silence" to help deliver justice.
Pramila Patten, the UN envoy for sexual violence in conflict, was in Israel to collect details and "identify avenues for support", Guterres's spokesman said.
In a message to victims released by the Israeli president's office, Patten said: "We are here to listen to you in all safety and confidentiality ... The world needs to know what really happened on October 7."
Amid the war, Israel as well as the United States have faced attacks from, and struck back at, multiple Iran-backed armed groups with violence flaring in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
Washington said a Sunday drone attack on a remote base in Jordan that killed three US troops and wounded dozens more "requires a response".
But spokesman Kirby insisted: "We are not looking for a war with Iran."
American and allied forces were targeted in the region again Monday, this time by rockets in Syria, though no injuries were reported, a US defence official said.