Israeli strikes kill six in Gaza as ceasefire talks intensify
Israeli fire killed six more Palestinians as mediators closed in on a second-phase ceasefire deal that still hinges on Hamas disarmament and an Israeli pullback.
Israeli strikes and gunfire killed at least six Palestinians in Gaza on Sunday, including four people near Al-Yeman Al-Saeed Hospital in the Jabalia refugee camp and two others in separate shootings in Khan Younis and Gaza City. The deaths came as Egypt, Qatar and Turkey wrapped up a week of talks aimed at salvaging the U.S.-brokered ceasefire and moving it into a second phase that has yet to hold.
The latest round of diplomacy centered on a 15-point blueprint presented by mediators and Donald Trump’s Board of Peace. Hamas and other Palestinian factions said they had submitted a written response, and sources close to the talks said they accepted 14 of the 15 items. The unresolved point is the hardest one: Hamas disarmament. Israel says Hamas must lay down its weapons, cede power in Gaza and play no role in the enclave’s future. Hamas says any full disarmament must be tied to a political path toward a Palestinian state.
That divide has turned the ceasefire into a stop-start process in which each new burst of violence tests whether the agreement has any real enforcement behind it. Since the October 2025 truce, Israeli strikes in Gaza have killed more than 950 people, according to health officials, while Israel says four soldiers have been killed by militants in the same period. The fighting underscores a familiar pattern in Gaza, where negotiations often stall at the point where promises must become binding terms on the ground.
The deadlock is also slowing other issues meant to follow a truce, including reconstruction, Israeli troop withdrawals and the creation of a new Palestinian government. Nickolay Mladenov, the top diplomat overseeing the U.S.-brokered ceasefire, has pointed to the dispute over disarming Hamas as the main obstacle. For Israel, the continued strikes keep pressure on armed groups and signal that attacks will not go unanswered. For Palestinians, the repeated bombardment makes the ceasefire look less like an end to war than a brief pause under fire.
The wider toll remains staggering. Gaza’s Health Ministry said the Palestinian death toll from the war had reached 73,001 on Sunday, with more than 173,200 wounded since the conflict began with the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which killed about 1,200 people and took 251 hostages. The ministry is staffed by medical professionals, and its figures are generally viewed as reliable by United Nations agencies and independent experts, though it does not separate civilians from militants. Earlier June reporting said Israeli attacks had killed at least 961 people and injured 3,020 since the ceasefire began, with the United Nations counting at least 229 children among the dead.
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