US plans $13 billion arms sale to Israel, US officials say
US President Joe Biden has notified Congress of an $US8 billion ($13 billion) arms sale to Israel, according to two US officials.
“The department has informally notified Congress of an $8 billion proposed sale of munitions to support Israel’s long-term security by resupplying stocks of critical munitions and air defence capabilities,” one official said.
The deal would need approval from House of Representatives and Senate committees and includes munitions for fighter jets and attack helicopters as well as artillery shells.
The package also includes small-diameter bombs and warheads, according to the sources.
Some of the munitions deliveries could be sent through US stock, while the majority would take up to several years to deliver, the source said.
The package includes air-to-air missiles to defend against drones and other airborne threats, 155mm artillery shells, Hellfire AGM-114 missiles and other bombs and guidance systems, according to one of the sources.
The United States is Israel’s largest military supplier.
Strikes in Gaza
Meanwhile, Gaza’s Hamas-run civil defence agency says at least 31 people were killed in Israeli air strikes on the Palestinian enclave on Saturday.
The strikes came despite the Israeli government confirming it had resumed negotiations with Hamas over a potential truce between the two sides, which have been engaged in combat since Hamas’s October 7 attack in 2023.
Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said a dawn air strike on a family home in Gaza City killed 11 people, seven of them children.
Images from Gaza City showed residents combing through smoking rubble.
Bodies including those of small children were lined up on the ground, shrouded in white sheets.
Elsewhere, the civil defence agency said an Israeli strike killed five security officers tasked with accompanying aid convoys as they drove through the southern city of Khan Yunis.
Mr Bassal accused Israel of having “deliberately targeted” them to “affect the humanitarian supply chain and increase the suffering” of the population.
The Israeli military said all those “targeted in the strike were involved in terrorist activities, which included exploiting humanitarian aid corridors”.
The IDF added the strike was carried out at a distance from “aid trucks and did not affect the continued entrance of humanitarian aid”.
Rescuers said strikes elsewhere in Gaza killed 10 other people.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said a total of 136 people had been killed over the previous 48 hours.
Gaza’s civil defence agency says an Israeli strike hit a family home in Gaza City. (Reuters: Rami Ali)
Truce talks resume
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said indirect negotiations with Hamas had resumed in Qatar for the release of hostages seized on October 7.
Mr Katz told relatives of one of the hostages, female soldier Liri Albag, that “efforts are underway to free the hostages, notably the Israeli delegation which left yesterday [Friday] for negotiations in Qatar”, his office said.
Hamas took at least 250 Israelis hostage, of whom a total of 96 remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Protesters in Tel Aviv critical of the government are urging more to be done to see Israeli hostages returned. (Reuters: Kai Pfaffenbach)
Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 45,000 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Gaza health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.
Both Israel and Hamas have publicly said they were willing to restart negotiations in the past week.
Reuters
