• Qatar urges Israel, Hamas to seize ‘window of opportunity’
• Nine children among 37 killed in military strikes across Gaza Strip

DOHA: Gaza mediators are engaging with Israel and Hamas to build on momentum from this week’s ceasefire with Iran and work towards a truce in the Palestinian territory, Qatar foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari said.

Israel and Iran on Tuesday agreed to a ceasefire brokered by the United States and Qatar just hours after the Islamic republic launched a salvo of missiles towards the wealthy Gulf state, targeting the American military base hosted there.

The unprecedented attack on Qatari soil followed Washington’s intervention into a days-long war between Israel and Iran which saw US warplanes strike Iranian nuclear facilities, prompting promises of retaliation from Tehran.

In an interview with AFP on Friday, Ansari said Doha — with fellow Gaza mediators in Washington and Cairo — was now “trying to use the momentum that was created by the ceasefire between Iran and Israel to restart the talks over Gaza”.

“If we don’t utilise this window of opportunity and this momentum, it’s an opportunity lost amongst many in the near past. We don’t want to see that again,” the spokesman, who is also an adviser to Qatar’s prime minister, said.

US President Donald Trump voiced optimism on Friday about a new ceasefire in Gaza saying an agreement involving Israel and Hamas could come as early as next week.

Mediators have been engaged in months of back-and-forth negotiations with the warring parties aimed at ending 20 months of war in Gaza, with Ansari explaining there were no current talks between the sides but that Qatar was “heavily involved in talking to every side separately”.

‘The right pressure’

A two-month truce, which was agreed as Trump came into office in January, collapsed in March with Israel intensifying military operations in Gaza afterwards.

“We have seen US pressure and what it can accomplish,” Ansari said referring to the January truce which saw dozens of prisoners held by Hamas released in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

The Qatari official said particularly in the context of US enforcement of the Israel-Iran truce, it was “not a far-fetched idea” that pressure from Washington would achieve a fresh truce in Gaza.

Another 37 Palestinians killed

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli forces killed 37 people in the devastated territory on Saturday, including at least nine children who died in strikes.

Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP 35 people were killed in seven Israeli drone and air strikes in various locations, and two others by Israeli fire while waiting for food aid in the Netzarim zone in central Gaza.

He said the dead included three children who were killed in an air strike on a home in Jabalia, in northern Gaza.

Bassal said at least six more children died in a neighbourhood in the northeast of Gaza City, including some in an air strike near a school where displaced people were sheltering.

AFP images showed mourners weeping over the bodies of seven people, including at least two children, wrapped in white shrouds and blankets at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.

Video footage filmed from southern Israel showed smoke rising over northern Gaza after blasts. Other AFP footage filmed in Gaza City showed a cloud of smoke rising from buildings after a strike.

Published in Dawn, June 29th, 2025