Israeli strikes kill nine in Gaza as Egypt opens ceasefire talks

Israeli strikes killed at least nine Palestinians in Gaza as Egypt opened a new round of ceasefire talks in Cairo, sharpening the gap between diplomatic language and the reality on the ground. One strike hit a Hamas-run police post near a tent camp sheltering displaced families in Khan Younis, killing five people and wounding 16 more. Another strike in Gaza City hit a vehicle and killed four others.

The talks in Cairo were led by a Hamas delegation headed by Gaza chief Khalil al-Hayya and were expected to last several days with Egyptian mediators and other Palestinian factions. They were meant to push forward a ceasefire built around a U.S.-backed 20-point plan associated with Donald Trump, but the hardest questions remain unsettled: Hamas disarmament, Israeli withdrawal and who will govern Gaza after the fighting.

Those unresolved issues have turned the police file into a central test of whether any pause can hold. Hamas wants roughly 10,000 police officers folded into a new force, while Israel rejects any role for Hamas-affiliated personnel. The latest strike on a police post showed how quickly those arguments can spill back into violence, even as negotiators sit in Cairo discussing a postwar security structure.

The Israeli military said the first strike targeted a Hamas command center, while Hamas security officials say many police personnel have been killed in recent months as Israel has widened strikes on police headquarters and officers. That clash over who counts as a combatant, and who can police Gaza after the war, has become one of the main obstacles to any durable arrangement. A ceasefire endorsed by the United Nations Security Council in November 2025 and backed by an international stabilization force still leaves the question of enforcement unresolved.

The truce has been under strain since October, when the fighting was paused after two years of war. Since then, Israeli strikes in Gaza have killed more than 950 Palestinians, while Palestinian militant attacks have killed four Israeli soldiers. Israel still controls more than half of Gaza, where residents have been ordered out and remaining buildings destroyed. Nearly all of Gaza’s 2 million people are now crowded into a narrow coastal strip, mostly in tents or damaged buildings.

Egypt warned on May 30 that dangerous escalations in Gaza threatened the ceasefire, a warning that now looks more like a description of daily life. Gaza health authorities say more than 71,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 170,000 injured since the war began, leaving the latest Cairo talks to contend with a territory already shattered by displacement, hunger and repeated failure of truces that have collapsed almost as soon as they were announced.