Gaza City, Palestinian Territories – A Hamas official told AFP on Tuesday that it was “necessary to reach a ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip, three weeks after Israel resumed bombardments on the Palestinian territory.
US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a day earlier said that new negotiations were in the works aimed at getting more hostages released from captivity in Gaza.
“We’re working now on another deal that we hope will succeed, and we’re committed to getting all the hostages out,” Netanyahu told reporters in the Oval Office.
Trump for his part said: “We are trying very hard to get the hostages out. We’re looking at another ceasefire, we’ll see what happens.”
The United States, Qatar and Egypt brokered a fragile ceasefire whose first phase took effect on January 19, before ending with Israel’s resumption of air strikes on Gaza on March 18.
The truce had allowed the return of 33 Israeli hostages, eight of whom were dead, in exchange for the release of some 1,800 Palestinians held in Israeli jails.
Badran told AFP on Tuesday that Hamas “is open to all ideas that would lead to a ceasefire and stop the genocide enacted against our Palestinian people”.
The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said Tuesday that at least 1,449 Palestinians have been killed in the renewed Israeli operations since March 18, taking the overall death toll since the start of the war to 50,810.
The war was triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel which resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Of the 251 hostages abducted during Hamas’s October 7 attack, 58 remain in captivity in Gaza, including 34 who the Israeli military says are dead.
