Smoke plumes rise during Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip, near a position across the border in southern Israel on November 8, 2023 amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. AFP
Meanwhile, Hamas has confirmed speaking to Israel via mediators on the issue of exchanging prisoners, according to Al Arabiya.
Hamas has been holding more than 240 Israelis and foreign nationals after capturing them at the start of the war on 7 October.
In recent days, Hamas has announced that a number of its captives were killed in the Israeli bombing campaign on the strip.
In October, Hamas released four captives, including two US citizens and two elderly Israeli women.
On the other side, Israel has been holding more than 5,200 Palestinian political prisoners in its jails, with many of them in captivity for tens of years.
Since 7 October, Israel has arrested more than 2,000 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, thus raising the number of Palestinian political prisoners in its jails to over 7,200.
President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has demanded an immediate and unconditional humanitarian truce to allow food and other relief aid to be delivered to the besieged strip through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt in the shortest possible time.
Egypt had mediated ceasefire agreements in previous rounds of fighting between Palestinian factions in Gaza and Israel.
Since the start of the Israeli war on Gaza on 7 October, Cairo has been coordinating with international and regional partners to reach a ceasefire.
The number of Palestinians killed by Israel’s war on Gaza has reached 10,569 people, including 4,324 children and 2,823 women, while more than 24,000 have been wounded, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Nearly 1.5 million Palestinians have been internally displaced by the Israeli army from the north to the South of the strip in the biggest forced displacement seen in the strip since 1948.
A third of all buildings in the north of Gaza have been destroyed.
Cairo has been coordinating the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza through the Rafah border crossing but Israel has blocked all but a fraction of what Gaza needs.
Egypt also received a number of wounded Palestinians for treatment in Egyptian hospitals.
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