CAIRO: Israeli strikes killed at least four people, including two children, in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, health officials said, as mediators held new talks with Hamas leaders to work towards full implementation of a US-brokered Gaza peace plan. Medics said an Israeli airstrike on a tent encampment in Khan Yunis, in the south of the enclave, killed a man and an eight-year-old girl.

In the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, an Israeli airstrike hit a house killing an 18-month-old child and wounding at least eight people, medics said. Later on Thursday, an Israeli strike targeted a Palestinian man on a bike near a tent encampment housing displaced families in Gaza City, killing one person and wounding 10 others.

The latest deaths add to a toll of more than 1,200 Palestinians, mostly civilians, killed by Israeli attacks since the ceasefire took effect, according to Gaza health officials.

Hamas does not usually disclose its losses. The truce halted full-scale fighting but has not ended near-daily Israeli strikes. Four Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza over the same period.

Hamas calls for withdrawal of Israeli forces during Cairo talks

Cairo talks

In Cairo, Hamas leaders were holding talks with mediators from Egypt, Qatar and Turkiye, over the implementation of the second phase of President Donald Trump’s Gaza plan, as presented to them by his Board of Peace, that oversees its implementation.

The plan called for a surge in humanitarian aid, governance by a civilian Palestinian administration, the disarmament of Hamas, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the deployment of an international force to help maintain security.

But progress has stalled in previous months. On Thursday, a Hamas official said the group was coming with a “positive and good” response, but he did not say whether the group had agreed to fully disarm a key sticking point in the talks over the past four months.

Hamas wants Israel to commit to ending attacks on Gaza and withdrawing its forces.

Sources close to Hamas said the group was willing to “confine and store” heavy weapons under a Palestinian body, not hand it over to Israel. Hamas did not comment on that.

It is also not yet clear what would be the fate of light or personal weapons or whether the new Hamas stance would be accepted by Israel and the Board of Peace.

The Board of Peace declined immediate comment on the Cairo talks.

Israel wants Hamas to cede power completely in Gaza and to fully disarm. Hamas dissolved a de facto Gaza government last month but maintained a caretaker body to provide vital services to residents. Israel effectively controls an estimated 64pc of the tiny coastal Gaza Strip, bombed to ruins by Israel’s two-year military assault that followed a 2023 Hamas attack on southern Israel.

Nearly all of Gaza’s 2 million people now live on a sliver of land on the coast, mainly in makeshift tents or damaged buildings and facing dire living conditions, under Hamas control.

Published in Dawn, July 31st, 2026