Hamas decided not to respond or engage with Israel's counter-proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza, an official told Reuters on Wednesday, affirming it is committed to the mediators' plan instead. Israel said on March 29 it conveyed to the mediators a counter-proposal in full coordination with the U.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip is expanding to seize “large areas,” the defense minister said, while officials at hospitals inside the Palestinian territory said that Israeli strikes overnight and into Wednesday had killed more than 40 people, nearly a dozen of them children.

Defence Minister Israel Katz said today that troops will "destroy and clear the area of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure". This would require, he said, a large-scale evacuation of Palestinians, forcing most of the remaining 2.2 million into a small "humanitarian area" in the south of the Gaza Strip.

France and Lebanon say Israel violated its ceasefire with Hezbollah with a strike in Beirut, as deaths mount in Gaza after Israel abandoned its ceasefire with Hamas.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced Wednesday a major expansion of the military’s operation in Gaza involving the seizure of large areas of land that would be “incorporated into Israel’s security zones.

Even before the latest orders, tens of thousands fled temporary shelters in the week after Israel shattered a 2-month-old ceasefire on March 18 with renewed bombardment and ground assaults.

CAIRO (AP) — The Hamas militant group said Saturday it has accepted a new Gaza ceasefire proposal from mediators Egypt and Qatar, but Israel said it has made a counter-proposal in “full coordination” with the third mediator, the United States.

The United Nations on Tuesday dismissed as "ridiculous" an assertion by Israel that there was enough food in the Gaza Strip to last for a long period of time, despite the closure of all 25 bakeries in the enclave supported by the World Food Programme.