Gaza City:
Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh will visit Egypt on Wednesday for talks on a ceasefire in Gaza and a prisoner exchange with Israel, a source close to the Palestinian Islamist group said.
Qatar-based Haniyeh will lead a high-level Hamas delegation to Egypt, where he will hold talks with Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel and others, the source told AFP on Tuesday.
The discussions will be about “stopping the aggression and the war to prepare an agreement for the release of prisoners (and) the end of the siege of the Gaza Strip,” the source said on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak. about the visit.
Under a weeklong ceasefire last month that Qatar helped negotiate, backed by Egypt and the United States, 80 Israeli hostages were released in exchange for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
According to the Hamas source, the talks in Egypt will focus on “the delivery of humanitarian aid, the withdrawal of the Israeli army from the Gaza Strip and the return of displaced people to their towns and villages in the north.”
Haniyeh's visit will be his second to Egypt since the war began on October 7, following a trip in early November.
US news platform Axios reported on Monday that David Barnea, the head of Israel's Mossad intelligence service, met with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and CIA Director Bill Burns in Europe to discuss a possible new deal for the release of hostages. discuss.
On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had “just sent the head of Mossad to Europe twice to advance a process to free our hostages.”
“I will make every effort on this issue, and it is our duty to bring them all back,” he said in a statement.
Meeting with hostage families on Tuesday, Netanyahu said that “rescuing them is a supreme task.”
Anger, fear and calls for a ceasefire from the hostages' families have increased after Israeli forces in Gaza accidentally shot dead three prisoners who had escaped their captors.
The deadliest war ever in the narrow territory began after Hamas militants crossed the border on October 7 and killed about 1,140 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on the latest official Israeli figures.
During their attack, militants kidnapped around 250 people, the latest Israeli figures say.
Israel's retaliatory bombings and ground offensive against Hamas have killed at least 19,667 people, mostly women and children, in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
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