Israel, Hamas hint no deal imminent

JERUSALEM, Feb 28 (AP/AFP): Israel and Hamas on Tuesday played down chances of an imminent breakthrough in talks for a ceasefire in Gaza, after U.S. President Joe Biden said Israel has agreed to pause its offensive during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan if a deal is reached to release some hostages.

The president's remarks came on the eve of the Michigan primary, where he faces pressure from the state's large Arab American population over his staunch support for Israel's offensive. Biden said he had been briefed on the status of talks by his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, but said his comments reflected his optimism for a deal, not that all the remaining hurdles had been overcome.

In the wake of Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, Israel's air, sea and ground campaign in Gaza has killed tens of thousands of people, obliterated large swaths of the urban landscape and displaced 80per cent of the battered enclave's population.

Israel's seal on the territory, which allows in only a trickle of food and other aid, has sparked alarm that a famine could be imminent, according to the United Nations.

With U.N. truck deliveries of aid hampered by the lack of safe corridors, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and France conducted an airdrop of food, medical supplies and other aid into Gaza on Tuesday. At a beach in southern Gaza, boxes of supplies dropped from military aircraft drifted down on parachutes as thousands of Palestinians ran along the sand to retrieve them.

But alarm is growing over worsening hunger among Gaza's 2.3 million Palestinians. Two infants died from dehydration and malnutrition at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza City, said the spokesman for Gaza's Health Ministry, Ashraf al-Qidra. He warned that infant mortality threatens to surge.

"Dehydration and malnutrition will kill thousands of children and pregnant women in the Gaza

Hamas claims rocket fire on

north Israel from Lebanon

The military wing of Palestinian group Hamas on Wednesday said it fired a volley of rockets towards northern Israel from south Lebanon, amid escalating exchanges at the Lebanon-Israel border in recent days.

Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, has exchanged near-daily fire with the Israeli army since war erupted between Israel and the Gaza-based Palestinian militant group in October, while Palestinian groups in Lebanon have also occasionally claimed attacks.

Hamas's armed wing the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades said in a statement it targeted two Israeli military sites with two barrages of "Grad rockets".

The attack from south Lebanon came in "response to Zionist massacres against civilians in the Gaza Strip and the assassination of martyred leaders and their brothers in the southern suburbs" of Beirut, the statement added.

The Israeli military said in a statement that "approximately 10 launches which crossed from Lebanon into northern Israel were identified", adding that sirens had sounded in north Israel's Kiryat Shmona area.

Air defences "successfully intercepted a number of the launches," the statement said, adding that the army "struck the sources of the fire in Lebanon".