Sawt Falasteen - Israeli hostages' group sees 'sabotage' in Gaza talks

The accusation from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum came with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a visit to Washington and after Israel's military said it had recovered from Gaza the bodies of five Israelis killed on the day the war began.

Netanyahu -- whose critics accuse him of prolonging the fighting -- is to hold talks Thursday with US President Joe Biden, who has been pushing a truce and hostage-release deal.

In a speech to the United States Congress on Wednesday, Netanyahu downplayed Palestinian civilian casualties during the more than nine months of war between Israeli forces and Hamas militants.

He again vowed to destroy Hamas and bring home the hostages.

The Hamas attack that started the war on October 7 resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people in Israel, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Out of 251 people taken hostage that day, 111 are still held in Gaza, including 39 the military says are dead.

At least 39,175 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's military campaign in Gaza since the war began, according to the health ministry of the Hamas-run territory, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths.

The latest toll includes 30 deaths over the previous 24 hours.

Palestinian medical services on Thursday said their teams transported four dead and 12 wounded after a strike on a house in the Gaza City area of the territory's north.

- 'Crisis of trust' -

An AFP correspondent reported air strikes and machine gun fire from tanks in Gaza City. To the south, witnesses reported artillery fire in the Khan Yunis city and Rafah areas, as well as air strikes in Al-Qarara, near Khan Yunis.

Israel's military said the five hostage bodies recovered from Gaza had been returned to Israel following a rescue operation.

All had previously been announced dead, and the military as well as the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said militants had killed them on October 7.

The Forum has regularly protested in Israel for a deal to get the remaining captives home.

On Thursday it demanded an urgent meeting with Israel's team for negotiating a ceasefire and hostage-release deal, saying a "crisis of trust" had emerged.

"It has now become apparent that the information provided to the hostages' families did not accurately reflect the situation's reality," the group said in a statement.

"This foot-dragging is a deliberate sabotage of the chance to bring our loved ones back. It effectively undermines the negotiations and indicates a serious moral failure."

Anti-government protesters who have also regularly demonstrated, sometimes by the tens of thousands, have similarly accused Netanyahu of dragging out the war, as have some analysts.

Far-right members of Netanyahu's ruling coalition oppose a truce.

After Netanyahu's speech to Congress, Hamas issued a statement saying he "thwarted all efforts aimed at ending the war and concluding a deal to release the prisoners, despite the continuous efforts of mediators from our brothers in Egypt and Qatar".

- Delegation delayed -

A senior US administration official said on Wednesday that negotiations on a Gaza deal were in the last stretch and Biden would try to close some "final gaps" with Netanyahu.

But a source with knowledge of the talks said separately that the arrival of an Israeli delegation in Doha for talks on Israeli demands for a deal had been postponed from Thursday to next week.

Washington has been increasingly alarmed by the humanitarian toll of the Gaza war, but in his speech to Congress, Netanyahu dismissed "all the lies" about civilian fatalities.

AFP correspondents in Gaza have daily witnessed children and women brought in to hospitals injured or dead.

In May, the United Nations said women and children made up at least 56 percent of those killed during the war, based on a breakdown provided by Gaza's health ministry at that time.

The United States on Wednesday criticised an Israeli bill that would declare the UN agency for Palestinian refugees -- the main aid agency in Gaza -- a terrorist organisation.

"UNRWA is not a terrorist organisation," said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, urging a halt to the legislation.

In January, Israel accused some of UNRWA's 13,000 Gaza employees of involvement in Hamas's October attack, and later said the agency employs more than 400 "terrorists".

A subsequent independent review of UNRWA found some "neutrality-related issues" but said Israel had yet to provide evidence for its allegations.

U.Shaheen--SF-PST