Israeli military strikes killed at least 45 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Sunday, most of them in the north of the enclave, Palestinian health officials said, as efforts to secure a ceasefire in the more than year-long war resumed in Qatar.

The directors of the CIA and Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency will meet with Qatar’s Prime Minister in Doha on Sunday, an official briefed on the talks told Reuters.

The negotiations 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 official said.

The talks aim to get Israel and Hamas to agree to a halt in fighting for less than a month in the hope it would lead to a more permanent ceasefire.

There was no immediate comment from Hamas.

The US, Qatar and Egypt have been leading negotiations to bring an end to the war, which broke out after Hamas fighters stormed into southern Israel on October 7 last year, killing 1,200 and taking more than 250 hostages, by Israeli tallies.

The death toll from Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza is approaching 43,000, Gaza health officials say, with the densely populated enclave in ruins.

It was not clear if Egyptian officials were also joining the talks on Sunday.

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

Twenty people were killed following an airstrike on houses in Jabalia, the largest of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps, which has been the focus of an Israeli military offensive for more than three weeks, medics and the Palestinian official news agency WAFA said.

Cautious Khamenei

Iran’s supreme leader said Israeli strikes on the country over the weekend “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed”, while stopping short of calling for retaliation, suggesting Iran is carefully weighing its response to the attack.

On Saturday, Israeli warplanes attacked military targets in Iran in response to an Iranian ballistic missile attack earlier this month.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s 85-year-old leader, who would make the final decision on any response, said: “It is up to the authorities to determine how to convey the power and will of the Iranian people to the Israeli regime and to take actions that serve the interests of this nation and country.”

Bullish Bibi

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that the strikes had “severely harmed” Iran and achieved all of Israel’s goals.

“The air force struck throughout Iran. We severely harmed Iran’s defence capabilities and its ability to produce missiles that are aimed toward us,” Netanyahu said in his first public comments on the strikes.