Gaza Truce Talks Continue Amid Famine Threat

Envoys pushed on with efforts for a Gaza truce and hostage release deal in Cairo talks, hoping to halt nearly five months of fighting with days to go before Ramadan.

As negotiators in Egypt sought to overcome tough stumbling blocks, deadly fighting again rocked Gaza where the UN warns famine looms and desperate crowds have stopped and looted food aid trucks.

Gazans were waiting to collect bags of flour outside an office of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, in Rafah, now home to nearly 1.5 million Palestinians, most of them displaced by the war.

One known sticking point centers on an Israeli demand for Hamas to provide a list of about 100 hostages believed to still be alive -- a task Hamas says it is unable to complete while bombing continues.

The Palestinian Islamist group said in a statement it had "shown the required flexibility with the aim of reaching an agreement", insisting on a complete halt to the fighting.

In past years, violence has flared during Ramadan in annexed east Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound -- Islam's third-holiest site and Judaism's most sacred, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.

Hamas has urged Muslims to flock there in great numbers, as they do every year, while some Israeli far-right politicians have urged restrictions.

Israel has said Muslims will initially be allowed into the site "in similar numbers" as in recent years, but that this will be followed by a weekly "situation assessment".

The war began after Hamas launched the October 7 attack on southern Israel that resulted in about 1,160 deaths, most of them civilians.

While the war has reduced vast stretches of Gaza to a wasteland of gutted buildings and rubble, the siege has sparked a humanitarian disaster for its 2.4 million people.

Hunger has reached "catastrophic levels" in the north, the UN World Food Programme has warned.