Israeli officials to hold ceasefire talks in Washington amid military escalation in Gaza

Cairo: Israeli planes and tanks struck heavily in north and south Gaza on Tuesday, destroying clusters of homes, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's confidant was in Washington, expected to discuss a possible ceasefire.

Thousands of residents again took flight as Israel issued new orders to evacuate, while its tanks pushed into eastern areas in Gaza City in the north and into Khan Younis and Rafah in the south, residents said.

Local health authorities said strikes had killed at least 20 people, with clusters of houses reported destroyed in Gaza City's Shejaia and Zeitoun districts, east of Khan Younis and in Rafah. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

Ismail, a resident of the Sheikh Radwan suburb of Gaza City, told Reuters that freshly displaced families were setting up tents in the road, after fleeing from areas north and east of the city and finding no other ground available.

"We don't sleep because of the sounds of explosions from tanks and planes. The occupation is destroying homes east of Gaza, in Jabalia and other places around us," he said via a text message, asking that his surname be withheld for his security.

Israel's Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, a confidant of Netanyahu, is in Washington this week to meet with officials at the White House, Trump's spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told reporters at a press briefing on Monday.

Dermer would be exploring possibilities of regional diplomatic deals in the wake of Israel's 12-day war with Iran last month, as well as ending the Gaza war, according to an Israeli official.

Netanyahu is due to travel to Washington next week and meet Trump on July 7, a US official said. The two leaders are expected to discuss Iran, Gaza, Syria and other regional challenges, an Israeli official in Washington said.

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said pressure by Trump on Israel would be key to any breakthrough in stalled ceasefire efforts.

"We call upon the US administration to atone for its sin towards Gaza by declaring an end to the war," he said.

After a six-week ceasefire at the start of this year, talks on extending the truce have been stalled.

Palestinian and Egyptian sources with knowledge of the latest ceasefire efforts said that mediators Qatar and Egypt had stepped up their contacts with the two warring sides, but that no date had been set yet for a new round of truce talks.

Hamas says it is willing to release all remaining hostages only as part of a deal that would end the war. Israel says the hostages must go free, and the war can end only when Hamas is disarmed and no longer ruling Gaza.

The war began when Hamas fighters stormed into Israel on October 7, 2023, killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took 251 hostages back to Gaza in a surprise attack.

Israel's subsequent military assault has killed more than 56,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to the Gaza health ministry, displaced almost the entire 2.3 million population and plunged the enclave into a humanitarian crisis.