DAVOS (Switzerland), Jan 23 (Agencies): The United States on Thursday announced plans for a "New Gaza" rebuilt from scratch to include residential towers, data centres and seaside resorts, part of President Donald Trump's push to advance an Israel-Hamas ceasefire shaken by repeated violations.
In the Gaza Strip, health officials said Israeli airstrikes on Thursday had killed five people in the enclave. There was no immediate Israeli comment on the violence, the latest to fray the October truce accord.
Trump has parlayed the ceasefire into a broader "Board of Peace" initiative aimed at resolving conflicts globally.
After hosting a signing ceremony for the board in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday, Trump invited his son-in-law Jared Kushner to present development plans for Gaza, its densely populated cities and towns now in ruins from two years of war.
"In the beginning, we were toying with (building) a free zone, and then (having) a Hamas zone," Kushner told an audience in Davos of Trump's early plans to rebuild Gaza, where nearly the entire 2 million population is internally displaced.
"And then we said, you know what? Let's just plan for catastrophic success."
Kushner presented the audience with a slideshow depicting a "master plan" for what he termed a "New Gaza", displayed on a colour-coded map with areas reserved for residential development, data centres and industrial parks.
The slides included an image of a Mediterranean coastline packed with glittering towers akin to those in Dubai or Singapore. They suggested redevelopment would begin in Rafah in the south, an area under complete Israeli military control.
Meanwhile, hundreds of red-eyed and exhausted people, including many journalists, crowded into the grounds of Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis in Gaza on Thursday to pay tribute to three fallen colleagues.
The three, including a regular AFP contributor, were killed by an Israeli strike the day before that the military said had targeted "suspects" operating a drone.
Mourners gathered around the bodies as they were taken from the morgue towards the hospital courtyard, where men lined up in silence to perform an Islamic funeral prayer recited for the dead.
"Today we are witnessing a systematic execution by the Israeli occupation forces of our colleagues," Ibrahim Qannan, one of the oldest journalists present, told the crowd.
On one stretcher, a bulletproof vest marked "Press" was laid on the body of Abdul Raouf Shaath, a regular AFP contributor.
Also on the vest, under a slate-gray sky where many men brought together in mourning wore hoodies and woollen caps, lay two dandelions and some flower petals.
