Qatar's prime minister has said that efforts to reach a new ceasefire in Gaza have made some progress but an agreement between Israel and Hamas to end the war remains elusive.
"We have seen on Thursday a bit of progress compared to other meetings yet we need to find an answer for the ultimate question: how to end this war. That's the key point of the entire negotiations," said Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman AlThani, who also serves as Foreign Minister.
Mossad Director David Barnea travelled to Doha on Thursday to meet Sheikh Mohammed amid efforts to reach a new ceasefire in Gaza, Axios reported last week.
Sheikh Mohammed did not say which elements of the ceasefire talks had progressed in recent days, but said Hamas and Israel remained at odds over the ultimate goal of negotiations.
He said the militant group is willing to return all remaining Israeli hostages if Israel ends the war in Gaza.
But Israel wants Hamas to release the remaining hostages without offering a clear vision on ending the war, he said.
"When you don't have a common objective, a common goal between the parties, I believe the opportunities (to end the war) become very thin," Sheikh Mohammed said at a press conference in Doha with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan.
Mr Fidan said talks that Turkish officials have held with Hamas had shown the group would be more open to an agreement that goes beyond a ceasefire in Gaza and aims for a lasting solution to the crisis with Israel, including a two-state solution.
Later, a Turkish diplomatic source said Mr Fidan had met with senior Hamas officials in Doha to discuss ceasefire negotiations and the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
"The Hamas side stated they continued working for a lasting ceasefire.
"They conveyed information about the meetings held in the past days," the source said, adding Mr Fidan had repeated that Turkey would continue international and bilateral efforts for peace in Gaza.
Gaza ministry says death toll has risen to over 52,000
The health ministry in Gaza announced that the death toll from the conflict has risen to more than 52,000 people, after hundreds previously listed as missing were confirmed dead.
"An additional 697 martyrs have been added to the cumulative statistics after their data was completed and verified by the committee monitoring missing persons," the health ministry said in a statement, giving the overall toll of 52,243.
Several United Nations agencies that operate in Gaza have said the ministry's data is credible and they are frequently cited by international organisations.
One hospital in the Palestinian territory confirmed the data and elaborated on the process.
"The families of those initially reported missing had informed authorities of their disappearance, but their bodies were subsequently recovered - either from beneath the rubble or from areas previously inaccessible to medical teams due to the presence of the Israeli army," said Khalil al-Daqran, spokesman for Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
He said the ministry's release of the 697 figure came after a "judicial committee" that collects and checks data completed its documentation, "confirming their martyrdom and transferring their status from missing persons to martyrs".
When asked why such a large number was announced simultaneously, the Hamas government's Media Office in Gaza explained that statistics are released periodically.
It is not the first time the health ministry has made such a revision.
"Because the judicial committee issues its report periodically rather than daily. They follow their own procedural protocols, and once their report was finalised, it was officially adopted," Ismail al-Thawabta, director general of the Media Office said.
With Gaza largely in ruins after more than 18 months of war, the health ministry has struggled to count the death toll.
Israel has repeatedly questioned the credibility of the daily figures put out by the ministry, criticising the Gaza authorities for failing to distinguish between combatants and civilians.
But neither the Israeli military nor top Israeli officials have denied the scale of the overall toll.
Gaza rescuers say teenager among eight killed in Israeli strikes
Gaza's civil defence agency said the latest Israeli strikes have killed at least eight people, including a 17-year-old who died in an attack on a southern town.
Israel resumed its military campaign on Gaza on 18 March, as a ceasefire agreement that had largely halted the fighting for two months collapsed over disagreements with Palestinian militant group Hamas, whose 2023 attack triggered the war.
The Hamas attack on 7 October 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel claims the renewed military campaign aims to force Hamas to free the remaining captives.
Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that "at least eight people have been killed and dozens injured in Israeli air strikes since dawn."
Mr Bassal said three people were killed when a group of civilians was struck in Gaza City's Zeitun neighbourhood, and three more in a strike that hit a residential building in the central Bureij refugee camp.
Two people died in the southern Khan Younis area, Mr Bassal said, including a 17-year-old boy in a strike on the town of Khuzaa and another person killed when Israeli forces hit fishing boats off the coast.
In a separate incident near Khan Younis, a strike wounded at least 12 people, most of them children, in Al-Mawasi, the civil defence spokesman added.
