Al Jazeera condemns Israel 'targeting' Gaza journalists

Qatar-based broadcaster Al Jazeera on Tuesday condemned Israel for "targeting" and severely wounding two of its Gaza journalists in a strike.

Reporter Ismail Abu Omar's life is at risk and cameraman Ahmad Matar was severely wounded when the pair were hit in Gaza's southern city of Rafah.

The network said the strike was a "fully fledged crime which adds to Israel's crime against journalists" and was aimed at preventing reporters covering the war.

"Targeting the reporter Ismail and cameraman Ahmad is a new episode in a series by the (Israeli) occupation deliberately targeting Al Jazeera crews," the network said in a statement.

Abu Omar's right leg was blown off in the drone strike, while doctors were trying to save the left one, Al Jazeera said, quoting an emergency physician.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said the two were hit in a strike from an Israeli warplane in the Moraj area.

The United States, Israel's vital ally, offered its "sincere condolences" over the injuries and noted that they were not the first Al Jazeera journalists harmed during the conflict.

"We continue to engage with the government of Israel to make clear that journalists ought to be protected," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.

"Journalists are putting themselves in harm's way to bring us the truth and we support their work in bringing us the truth," he said.

"We want to see that they're protected to the maximum extent possible."

The two journalists have been admitted to the European Hospital, on the southern edge of Khan Yunis city.

The World Health Organization said Tuesday the facility is "overwhelmed, overcrowded and undersupplied" with more than 20,000 people sheltering in the hospital.

Hamas's government media office said it "condemns in the strongest terms the Israeli occupation army's targeting of the Al Jazeera crew".

The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strike when contacted by AFP, saying only it would check the details of the incident.

Two other journalists with the broadcaster have been killed during Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza, while bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh was wounded.

His son and fellow journalist Hamza Wael al-Dahdouh was killed when Israeli forces targeted a car last month, along with another video journalist, Mustafa Thuria.

The network's cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa was killed in a separate strike in December.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has recorded the deaths of at least 85 journalists and media workers -- 78 of them Palestinian -- since the war erupted on October 7.

Israeli delegation departs Cairo

An Israeli delegation left talks in Cairo to pause the Israel-Hamas war on Tuesday, Israeli and US media reported.

Israeli intelligence chief David Barnea met CIA Director William Burns in the Egyptian capital for talks on a Qatari-brokered plan to temporarily halt fighting in Gaza.

The negotiations, which also involved Qatar's prime minister and Egyptian officials, were part of an intensifying effort to secure a ceasefire before Israel proceeds with a full-scale ground incursion into the southern city of Rafah, where more than half of the territory's population has fled.

Foreign governments and the United Nations have voiced increasingly frantic alarm about the possible civilian toll of such an assault, while Israel has vowed to press ahead with its campaign until it successfully eradicates Hamas from all of Gaza, including Rafah.

The Israeli delegation was on its way back from Cairo on Tuesday night, an official in the Prime Minister’s Office told The Times of Israel.

The Wall Street Journal, citing Egyptian officials, said Barnea's delegation had departed the Egyptian capital "without closing any of the major gaps in the negotiations".

The talks will continue for another three days, according to Egyptian state-owned television channel Al Qahera, citing a senior Egyptian official.

The same official said the talks had been mostly "positive", the television channel reported.

A Hamas source told AFP that a member of the group's political bureau would head a delegation to Cairo to meet the Egyptian and Qatari intelligence chiefs.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby called the negotiations "constructive and moving in the right direction".

"Nothing is done until it is all done," he told reporters at the White House.

Ahead of the efforts to hammer out a truce, the Israeli campaign group Hostages and Missing Families Forum sent the Mossad chief a plea saying the delegation must "not return without a deal".

About 130 of the 250 hostages taken by Hamas during the October 7 attack are still believed to be in Gaza. Israel says 29 of them are presumed dead.

The Hamas attack that launched the war resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

At least 28,473 people, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israel's relentless bombardment and ground offensive in Hamas-run Gaza since then, according to the health ministry in the Palestinian territory.