US says progress made at Gaza truce talks in Cairo

This handout picture released by the Israeli army on August 23, 2024, reportedly shows Israeli forces during an operation to dismantle a tunnel in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. [AFP]

The United States said Friday that progress had been made at the latest round of Gaza truce talks, after the presence of Israeli troops on the Egyptian border emerged as a major sticking point.

The White House said CIA chief William Burns was among US officials taking part in the discussions in Cairo, joining the heads of Israel's spy agency and security service.

"There has been progress made. We need now for both sides to come together and work towards implementation," US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.

Preliminary talks that began Thursday "were constructive in nature", he said, adding that reports that the diplomacy was "near collapse" were inaccurate.

An Egyptian source close to the negotiations told AFP the Egyptian and Qatari intelligence chiefs were also taking part.

"The discussions are taking place in Cairo... in preparation for an enlarged round of negotiations which will begin on Sunday," the source said.

"Washington is discussing with mediators new proposals to bridge the gap between Israel and Hamas and for mechanisms to implement" the plan.

According to the White House, US President Joe Biden discussed the upcoming talks by telephone Friday with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Qatari emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani.

The Egyptian source said Sunday's negotiations would be "a pivotal step in formulating an agreement that will be announced if Washington can pressure (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu".

Representatives of Hamas, whose unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel triggered the war in Gaza, were not attending the Cairo talks.

An official from the Islamist movement, Hossam Badran, told AFP Friday that Netanyahu's insistence that his troops remain on a strip along the Gaza-Egypt border called the Philadelphi Corridor reflected "his refusal to reach a final agreement".

Egypt, Qatar and the United States have for months tried to reach a deal to end more than 10 months of war between Israel and Hamas.

Previous optimism during months of on-off truce talks has proven unfounded.

Fighting raged on Friday, with witnesses reporting combat in northern, central and southern Gaza.

An overnight strike on a house west of the southern city of Khan Yunis killed 11 people -- including four women and four children -- and wounded a number of others, Gaza's civil defence agency said early Saturday.

'Exhausted and terrified'

The United Nations said tens of thousands of civilians had been on the move again from Deir el-Balah and Khan Yunis after Israeli evacuation orders, which precede military operations.

The war has displaced virtually all of Gaza's population, often multiple times, leaving them deprived of shelter, clean water and other essentials as disease spreads, the UN says.

"Civilians are exhausted and terrified, running from one destroyed place to another, with no end in sight," Muhannad Hadi, the UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, said late Thursday.

Hamas's October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,199 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory military campaign has killed 40,265 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths. The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.

Palestinian militants also seized 251 hostages, of whom 105 remain in Gaza, including 34 the military says are dead.

Israel's military recovered the remains of six hostages from a tunnel in the Khan Yunis area this week.

Netanyahu faces regular protests by hostage supporters demanding a deal to bring them home.

Ella Ben Ami, whose father is a hostage, said after meeting Netanyahu Friday that she "left with a heavy and difficult feeling that this (ceasefire deal) isn't going to happen soon", according to a statement from campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.

'Now is the time'

Diplomatic efforts to reach a Gaza truce and avert a wider war intensified following the killings of two senior Iran-backed militants last month that sparked threats of reprisals from Tehran and its allies, who blamed Israel.

Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement and Israeli forces have exchanged near-daily cross-border fire since the Gaza war began.

Lebanon said Israeli strikes killed eight people, including a child, in the south on Friday, with Hezbollah saying the other seven dead were fighters.

A war monitor said Israeli strikes on central Syria Friday killed three  Iran-backed fighters.

Accepting her Democratic Party's presidential nomination in Chicago, US Vice President Kamala Harris said "now is the time to get a hostage deal and a ceasefire deal done".

The basis of talks has been a framework that Biden outlined in late May, which he described as an Israeli proposal.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited the Middle East this week and said Netanyahu was on board with a US proposal to bridge gaps and reach a ceasefire.

National Security Council spokesman Kirby said Washington continued to believe that Netanyahu accepted the proposal and appealed again to Hamas to do the same.

Hamas official Badran reiterated Friday that the group "accepted the Biden plan" as originally outlined, and said Washington must pressure Netanyahu.

He said Hamas would accept "nothing less than the withdrawal of occupation forces, Philadelphi included".

Netanyahu's hard-right coalition relies on the support of members opposed to a truce, and his office rejected as "incorrect" media reports that the prime minister "has agreed that Israel will withdraw" from the Philadelphi Corridor.