Egypt proposes initial two-day truce in Gaza

Egypt has proposed an initial two-day ceasefire in Gaza to exchange four Israeli hostages of Hamas for some Palestinian detainees, Egypt's president said on Sunday as Israeli military strikes killed 45 Palestinians across the enclave. 

Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah al-Sisi made the announcement as efforts to defuse the devastating, more than year-long war resumed in Qatar with the directors of the CIA and Israel's Mossad intelligence agency taking part.

Speaking alongside Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune during a press conference in Cairo, Sisi also said that talks should resume within 10 days of implementing the temporary ceasefire in efforts to reach a permanent one.

There was no immediate comment from Israel or Hamas but a Palestinian official close to the mediation effort told Reuters: "I expect Hamas would listen to the new offers, but it remains determined that any agreement must end the war and get Israeli forces out of Gaza."

Israel has said the war cannot end until Hamas has been wiped out as a military force and governing entity in Gaza.

The US, Qatar and Egypt have been spearheading negotiations.

The death toll from Israel's air and ground onslaught in Gaza is approaching 43,000, Gaza health officials say, with the densely populated enclave in ruins.

An official briefed on the talks told Reuters earlier on Sunday that negotiations in Doha will seek a short-term ceasefire and the release of some hostages being held by Hamas in exchange for Israel's release of Palestinian prisoners.

The objective, still elusive after multiple mediation attempts, is to get Israel and Hamas to agree to a halt in fighting for less than a month in the hope this would lead to a more permanent ceasefire.

At least 43 of those killed in Gaza on Sunday were in the north of the enclave, where Israeli troops have returned to root out Hamas fighters who it says have regrouped there.

The United Nations said the plight of Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza was "unbearable" and the conflict was being "waged with little regard for the requirements of international humanitarian law".

"The Secretary-General (Antonio Guterres) is shocked by the harrowing levels of death, injury and destruction in the north, with civilians trapped under rubble, the sick and wounded going without life-saving health care, and families lacking food and shelter, amid reports of families being separated and many people detained," UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.

Israeli authorities were hampering efforts to deliver food, medicine and other essential humanitarian supplies, putting lives at risk, he said. The devastation and deprivation resulting from Israeli military operations in the north were making life there untenable.

Israel says its forces operate in accordance with international law. It says it targets Hamas operatives who conceal themselves among the civilian population which they use as human shields, a charge Hamas denies.

It denies blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza, blaming international organisations for problems distributing it and accusing Hamas of stealing from aid convoys.