Israel-Hamas War: Six months of devastation that crippled civilian lives in Gaza

The Israel-Hamas war that has devastated the Gaza Strip entered its seventh month on Sunday, with talks towards a truce and hostage release deal expected to resume in Cairo. The photo shows Palestinians inspecting the rubble of destroyed buildings following Israeli airstrikes on the town of Khan Younis in southern Gaza Strip. (AP photo)

Palestinians flee from the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza after Israel's January 29 ground and air offensive. At its six-month mark, it is not clear what direction the war will now take. Weeks of mediation by the U.S., Egypt and Qatar for a longer cease-fire have so far been unable to make a breakthrough. (AP photo)

Police officers evacuated a woman and a child from a site hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, in Ashkelon, southern Israel on October 7, 2023. The photo captures what six months of devastating war have brought for Israel. Months of stop-start ceasefire talks have made no headway since a week-long truce in November saw some hostages exchanged for Palestinian prisoners detained by Israel. (AP photo)

In a new push in Cairo, CIA Director Bill Burns and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani will join Egyptian officials for indirect talks from Sunday between the Israeli and Hamas delegations, Egypt's Al-Qahera News said. Hamas has confirmed that its core demands are a complete ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli forces -- conditions Israel has previously rejected. (AP photo)

Months of war have pushed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the besieged territory to the brink of famine, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying everyone in Gaza was now in need of humanitarian aid. A UN-backed assessment meanwhile said 300,000 people in the territory's north would face famine by May without a surge of aid. UN rights chief Volker Turk said Israel was blocking aid and conducting the conflict in a way that "may amount to the use of starvation as a method of war". (AP photo)

A Palestinian father-of-six in northern Gaza, Muhammad Yunis, 51, told AFP the territory's 2.4 million people desperately need a reprieve from the bombardment and suffering. "It's been half a year and the bombing and starvation continue," said the man from Beit Lahia, now a broken landscape of shattered buildings. "Watching the thin bodies of our children takes away our souls ... I feel helpless and humiliated," he said. "Isn't the bombing, death and destruction enough? There are bodies still under the rubble. We can smell the stench." (AP photo)

Fears that the war could spread have intensified after Iran vowed to hit back for the killing of seven of its Revolutionary Guards in an air strike on the consular annex of its embassy in Damascus. Iran's leaders have pledged retaliation, and the leader Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, Hassan Nasrallah, has called the consulate strike a "turning point". Israel's military said Sunday its warplanes had struck Hezbollah sites in eastern Lebanon's Baalbek region, where the group has a strong presence, in retaliation for one of its drones being downed. (AP photo)

The UN Human Rights Council demanded a halt in all arms sales to Israel, highlighting warnings of "genocide" in its war in Gaza, which has killed more than 33,000 people. The resolution -- which passed with 28 of the council's 47 member states voting in favour, six opposed and 13 abstaining -- marked the first time the United Nations top rights body has taken a position on the bloodiest-ever war to beset the besieged Palestinian territory. Meirav Eilon Shahar, Israel's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, slammed the resolution as "a stain for the Human Rights Council and for the UN as a whole". (AP photo)

One in three children below the age of two in northern Gaza is now "acutely malnourished", and famine is looming, the main UN agency operating in the Palestinian enclave said. "Children's malnutrition is spreading fast and reaching unprecedented levels in Gaza," the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said in a social media post. (AP photo)

The families of Israeli hostages held in Gaza by Hamas blasted their country's leader as a "traitor" as anger at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's handling of the war grew in the fourth consecutive night of mass protests. Thousands gathered in front of the country's parliament, with hostage families and former prime minister Ehud Barak blaming Netanyahu for the October 7 "disaster" and demanding an election. (AP photo)