Israel-Hamas war death toll crosses 40,000 as peace talks continue in Qatar

The White House says a new round of talks aimed at halting the Israel-Hamas war has resumed in Doha and is expected to run into Friday.

The talks will also focus on securing the release of scores of hostages, with a potential deal seen as the best hope of heading off an even larger regional conflict.

The United States, Qatar and Egypt were to meet with an Israeli delegation in Qatar as the Palestinian death toll from the 10-month-old war surpassed 40,000.

A Palestinian official said Hamas would not take part in Thursday’s talks but that its senior officials, who reside in Qatar, were ready to discuss any proposals from the mediators, as they have in past rounds.

A cease-fire in Gaza would likely calm tensions across the region and may persuade Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah to refrain from retaliatory strikes on Israel after the killing of a top Hezbollah commander in an Israeli airstrike and of Hamas’ top political leader in an explosion in Iran’s capital.

The mediators have spent months trying to hammer out a three-phase plan in which Hamas would release scores of hostages captured in the October 7 attack that triggered the war in exchange for a lasting cease-fire, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the release of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.

Qatar’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed al Ansari said the cease-fire talks are still ongoing and will resume on Friday.

In a statement carried by the Qatari News Agency, he said “the mediators are resolute in their commitment to move forward in their endeavors to reach a cease-fire in (Gaza) that would facilitate the release of hostages and enable the entry of the largest possible amount of humanitarian aid” into the territory.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli military issued rare and swift condemnations of the attack by Israeli settlers on a village in the occupied West Bank that killed at least one Palestinian and injured another.