CAIRO, DOHA: The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Tuesday that 31 people were killed in the Palestinian territory in the past 24 hours, taking the overall death toll to 45,885 as the war entered its 16th month.

The ministry also said that at least 109,196 people had been wounded in the war between Israel and Hamas, triggered by the Palestinian group’s Oct, 7, 2023 attack.
Separately, Israeli forces killed at least three Palestinians in stepped-up operations across the occupied West Bank following the killing of three Israelis near a Jewish settlement. The Palestinian Health Ministry said an 18-year-old was killed overnight in an Israeli airstrike in Tamun, a town northeast of Nablus city, while a 40-year-old was shot dead in the nearby village of Taluza.

The Israeli military said that after a clash with militants in the Tamun area, its war planes struck and killed two fighters. The official Palestinian news agency WAFA also reported a second Palestinian killed in a strike in Tamun.
The Israeli military said a third militant was killed in a firefight in Taluza and several were arrested in various incidents. Hamas’s armed Al-Qassam Brigades confirmed the man killed in Taluza was one of its fighters.
WAFA meanwhile reported revenge attacks by Jewish settlers, who it said had set fire to a vehicle overnight and attacked a Palestinian village.
It said the Israeli military was setting up more checkpoints and road closures, and conducting increased incursions and raids.
Meanwhile, Israeli authorities renewed a closure order for Al Jazeera’s Ramallah office in the West Bank.
Israeli soldiers posted the extension order on the entrance of the building housing Al Jazeera’s offices in central Ramallah.
The extension applies from Dec. 22 and lasts 45 days. In September, Israeli forces raided the Ramallah office and issued an initial 45-day closure order.
Talks aimed at cementing a truce in Gaza are ongoing, with “technical meetings” taking place between the parties, mediator Qatar’s Foreign Ministry said.
“The technical meetings are still happening between both sides,” ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari said, referring to meetings with lower-level officials on the details of an agreement. “There are no principal meetings taking place at the moment.”
Mediators Qatar, Egypt and the US have been engaged in months of talks between Israel and Hamas that have failed to end the devastating conflict in Gaza.
Ansari said there were “a lot of issues that are being discussed” in the ongoing meetings, but refused to go into details “to protect the integrity of the negotiations.”
Hamas said at the end of last week that indirect negotiations in Doha had resumed, while Israel said it had authorized negotiators to continue the talks in the Qatari capital.
A previous round of mediation in December ended with both sides blaming the other for the impasse.

LONDON: Clan leaders in Gaza City and northern Gaza called for the Palestinian Authority to govern the coastal enclave in a rare public statement this week.

Prominent clan leaders in the Gaza Strip have requested President Mahmoud Abbas take charge of Gaza’s affairs, which have been affected by Israel’s war in the enclave and clashes between Hamas fighters and Israeli forces since October 2023.

Some signatories include Yahya Ayub Al-Kafarnah, chief of Gaza’s northern clans; Zakaria Jahshan, coordinator of the Christian denominations; and Mohammed Al-Masry, former mayor of Beit Lahia municipality, along with many other community leaders, dignitaries, and Mukhtars.

They urged the PA to lead the Gaza Strip, connect it to the West Bank geographically, and stop the ongoing forced displacement of Palestinians from northern Gaza by Israel.

They confirmed that the Palestine Liberation Organization, which neither Hamas nor Islamic Jihad are a part of, will continue to be the legitimate and sole representative of the Palestinian people.

The community leaders urged the PA to exercise pressure on Arab and Western countries to “force the Israeli government to stop its war of genocide ... and secure an immediate ceasefire,” the WAFA press agency reported.

Mediated and indirect talks between Hamas and Israel to secure an exchange of captives and a truce have been ongoing for months, but without success.

At least 45,000 Palestinians have died during the war in Gaza, and around 11,000 are missing under the rubble of bombed or damaged buildings, with 100,000 people having left the enclave.

The Gaza Strip’s population had decreased by 6 percent in 2024, according to recent data by the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics.