GAZA CITY – Efforts towards a truce in the Israel-Hamas war continued on March 16 after a new proposal from the Palestinian militant group which also called for more aid into Gaza, where famine threatens and the first food shipment by sea was unloaded.

Israel said it will send a delegation to Qatar for another round of talks on a possible deal.

It also advanced plans for a military operation in Rafah, where most of Gaza’s population has sought refuge from more than five months of war and deprivation.

The US charity World Central Kitchen (WCK) on March 16 said its team had finished unloading almost 200 tonnes of food, the first shipment to arrive on a new maritime aid corridor from Cyprus.

“All cargo was offloaded and is being readied for distribution in Gaza,” WCK said in a statement.

AFP footage on March 15 showed WCK’s partner, the Open Arms vessel, towing a barge with the aid close to the rubble-strewn shore of north Gaza. Open Arms had sailed from Cyprus on March 12.

The United Nations has reported particular difficulty in accessing northern Gaza for deliveries of food and other aid.

Residents say they have resorted to eating wild plants and animal fodder, and some have stormed the few aid trucks that have made it through.

“Doctors are reporting that they no longer see normal-sized babies,” Mr Dominic Allen, of the United Nations Population Fund, said after visiting Gaza’s north.

With the situation increasingly dire, multiple nations began daily aid airdrops over Gaza, and the new sea corridor is to be complemented by a temporary pier which United States troops are on their way to build.

But air and sea missions are no alternative to land deliveries, UN officials and aid groups say.

A spokesman for the health ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said on March 16 that at least 63 people had been killed over the previous 24 hours, including 36 during a strike on a house sheltering displaced people in Nuseirat, central Gaza.

Witnesses reported air strikes and fighting in the southern Gaza Strip’s main city of Khan Yunis, as well as areas in the north.

In negotiations aimed at securing a truce and hostage deal, Hamas has put forward a new proposal for a six-week ceasefire and the exchange of about 42 Israeli hostages for a larger number of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, an official from the Islamist group told AFP.

Palestinian militants seized about 250 Israeli and foreign hostages during the Hamas attack which triggered the war on Oct 7.

Dozens of captives were released during a week-long truce in November. Israel believes about 130 remain in Gaza, including 32 presumed dead.

Hamas’ Oct 7 attack resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.

Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel has carried out relentless bombardment and a ground invasion that has killed at least 31,553 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the health ministry.

Until March 15, Hamas had insisted no further hostages would be exchanged without a permanent ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Now, the militants are saying that, during a six-week truce, Israeli forces would need to pull out of “all cities and populated areas” in Gaza, according to the Hamas official.

The Hamas proposal also calls for ramped-up humanitarian aid, the official added.

Israel has so far rejected withdrawing troops from Gaza, saying such a move would amount to victory for Hamas.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Israel would send a delegation to Qatar for another round of talks on securing the hostages’ release.

Israel did not send a team to recent talks in Cairo, which failed to secure a truce for the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

The US, which provides Israel with billions of dollars in military assistance, has grown increasingly critical of Mr Netanyahu over his handling of the war but has not supported an immediate and permanent ceasefire.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, who favours such a measure, said after meeting US President Joe Biden in Washington that “none of us like to see American weapons being used in the way they are”, which, he said, “is not self-defence”.

Mr Biden praised unusually critical comments by US Senate Leader Chuck Schumer, who had described Mr Netanyahu as one of several “major obstacles” to peace.

“I think he expressed serious concern shared not only by him, but by many Americans,” Mr Biden said.

Marking the first Friday of Ramadan, thousands of Muslim worshippers gathered in the revered Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem on March 15.

The site has seen clashes during Ramadan in years past, but the day went peacefully. Some younger men were turned away by the thousands of police officers deployed and conducting security checks.

Mr Netanyahu’s office said on March 15 that he had approved the military’s plan for an operation against Hamas in Rafah, where around 1.5 million people are sheltered, many in rough tents near the Egyptian border.

There were no details or a timeline for the long-threatened operation.

The White House, which has said an assault on Rafah would be a “red line” without credible civilian protection measures, said it had not seen the plan.

WCK founder Jose Andres said the seaborne aid which reached Gaza is the equivalent of 12 trucks but “we could bring thousands of tonnes a week”.

Before the war, a daily average of around 500 trucks entered Gaza, the UN has said, but the current number is far below that.

Before the Open Arms reached Gaza, Mr Andres told NBC’s Meet The Press that this would be the first attempt to reach “the shores of Gaza in years, because there’s been a navy blockade”.

Israel has blockaded Gaza since 2007, the year Hamas took control, and has imposed a near-total siege since October. Israel’s military said the aid delivery was not a blockade breach. AFP