Health ministry in Gaza says war death toll at 38,664

GAZA/RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories — The health ministry in the Gaza Strip said on Monday at least 38,664 people have been killed in the war between Israel and Palestinian fighters.

The toll includes 80 new deaths in 24 hours, a ministry statement said, adding that 89,097 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began when Hamas fighters attacked Israel on October 7.

The ministry also updated the toll from an Israeli air strike on a school in central Gaza on Sunday, saying it had increased from 15 dead to 22.

The Abu Araban school was run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, and housed "thousands of displaced people", civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP on Sunday.

It was the fifth Israeli strike on a school being used to shelter displaced Palestinians in eight days.

A Hamas official said Sunday that the Palestinian group was withdrawing from Gaza truce talks, as Israeli bombardments hit a school a day after a deadly strike targeting the fighter commander Mohammed Deif.

Speaking after the strike on southern Gaza's Al Mawasi, which the health ministry in the territory said killed at least 92 people, a senior official from Iran-backed Hamas cited Israeli "massacres" as a reason for suspending negotiations.

A second Hamas official said Deif, commander of the Islamist group's military wing, was "well and directly overseeing" operations despite the Israeli bombing raid that the military said was an attempt to kill him.

On Sunday, Israeli forces struck a UN-run school in the central Nuseirat refugee camp that the military said "served as a hideout" for militants.

The civil defence agency in Gaza said 15 people were killed in the strike, the fifth attack in just over a week to hit a school used as shelter by displaced Palestinians.

The first Hamas official, quoting the group’s Qatar-based political chief Ismail Haniyeh, said Israel’s “lack of seriousness, continued policy of procrastination and obstruction, and the ongoing massacres against unarmed civilians” were behind the “decision to halt negotiations”.

But according to the official, Haniyeh told international mediators Hamas was “ready to resume negotiations” when Israel’s government “demonstrates seriousness in reaching a ceasefire agreement and a prisoner exchange deal”.

Meanwhile, senior officials from the rival Palestinian groups Hamas, which is at war with Israel, and Fateh have agreed to meet in Beijing this month in a renewed bid for reconciliation, officials said on Monday.

The Hamas delegation is to be headed by Haniyeh, while the Fateh representation will be led by deputy head Mahmud Alul, Fateh sources said.

Hamas had no immediate comment.

The two groups have been bitter rivals since Hamas fighters ejected Fateh from the Gaza Strip after deadly clashes that followed Hamas’s resounding victory in a 2006 election.

After seizing control of Gaza in 2007, the Islamist Hamas movement has ruled the territory ever since.

The secularist Fateh movement controls the Palestinian Authority which has partial administrative control in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Several reconciliation bids have failed, but calls have grown since the Hamas October 7 surprise attacks on Israel set off the Gaza war, with violence also soaring in the West Bank where Fateh is based.

China hosted Fateh and Hamas in April but a meeting scheduled for June was postponed.

The representatives are to meet with Chinese officials in Beijing on July 20 and July 21, according to Fateh’s Central Committee Deputy Secretary-General Sabri Saidam.

Before that, a meeting of the two groups could take place, he added.

The goal, said Saidam, “is to end the state of division with a commitment to past agreements and agreeing on a relationship between the Palestinian groups in the next stage”.

Another Fateh executive member also said a joint Fateh-Hamas meeting could be held in Beijing before the official agenda starts.