Israel has essentially endorsed a framework of a proposed Gaza cease-fire and hostage release deal, and it is now up to Hamas to agree to it, a senior U.S. administration official said Saturday, a day before talks to reach an agreement were to resume in Egypt.

Humanitarian aid is dropped by the United States over Gaza City, Gaza Strip, on Saturday, March 2, 2024.

International mediators have been working for weeks to broker a deal to pause the fighting before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins around March 10. A deal would likely allow aid to reach hundreds of thousands of desperate Palestinians in northern Gaza who aid officials worry are under threat of famine.

The Israelis “have more or less accepted” the proposal, which includes the six-week cease-fire as well as the release by Hamas of hostages considered vulnerable, which includes the sick, the wounded, the elderly and women, said the official.

“Right now, the ball is in the court of Hamas and we are continuing to push this as hard as we possibly can,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House to brief reporters.

Officials from Israel and from Hamas did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A senior Egyptian official said mediators Egypt and Qatar are expected to receive a response from Hamas during the Cairo talks scheduled to start Sunday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not publicly authorized to discuss the talks.

There is increasing criticism over the hundreds of thousands struggling to survive in northern Gaza, which has borne the brunt of the conflict that began when the Hamas militant group attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seizing around 250 hostages.

U.S. military planes began the first airdrops of thousands of meals into Gaza, and the militaries of Jordan and Egypt said they also conducted airdrops. Aid groups say airdrops should be only a last resort and instead urge the opening of other crossings into Gaza and the removal of obstacles at the few that are open.

The European Union’s diplomatic service said many of the hundreds of Palestinians killed or wounded in the chaos surrounding an aid convoy on Thursday were hit by Israeli army fire and urged an international investigation. It said responsibility for the crisis lay with “restrictions imposed by the Israeli army and obstructions by violent extremist(s) to the supply of humanitarian aid.”

Gaza's Health Ministry raised the death toll from Thursday's violence to 118 after two more bodies were recovered Saturday. It said the wounded remained at 760.

Israel's chief military spokesperson, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said Israel organized Thursday's convoy, “and claims that we attacked the convoy intentionally and that we harmed people intentionally are baseless."

Residents in northern Gaza say they are searching rubble and garbage for anything to feed their children, who barely eat one meal a day. Many families have begun mixing animal and bird food with grain to bake bread.

At least 10 children have starved to death, according to hospital records in Gaza, the World Health Organization said.

Gaza's Health Ministry said the Palestinian death toll from the war has climbed to 30,320. The ministry doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its figures, but says women and children make up around two-thirds of those killed.

In the southernmost city of Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s people now seek refuge, an Israeli airstrike struck tents outside the Emirati hospital, killing 11 people and wounding about 50, including health workers, the Health Ministry said. Israel's military said it was targeting Islamic Jihad militants.

Israel’s air, sea and ground offensive has reduced much of densely populated northern Gaza to rubble. The military told Palestinians to move south, but as many as 300,000 people are believed to have remained.

Roughly one in six children under 2 in the north suffer from acute malnutrition and wasting, “the worst level of child malnutrition anywhere in the world,” Carl Skau, deputy executive director of the World Food Program, said this week. “If nothing changes, a famine is imminent in northern Gaza.”

People have overwhelmed trucks and grabbed what they can, Skau said, forcing the WFP to suspend deliveries to the north.

In the violence Thursday, people rushed about 30 trucks bringing a predawn delivery to the north. Palestinians said nearby Israeli troops shot into the crowds. Israel said they fired warning shots toward the crowd and insisted many of the dead were trampled. Doctors at hospitals in Gaza and a U.N. team that visited a hospital said large numbers of the wounded had been shot.

Ahmed Abdel Karim, being treated for gunshot wounds in his feet, said he had spent two days waiting for aid trucks to arrive.

“Everyone attacked and advanced on these trucks. Because of the large number, I could not get flour,” he said.

Radwan Abdel-Hai, a father of four young children, heard a rumor late Wednesday that an aid convoy was on its way. He and five others took a donkey cart and found a “sea of people” waiting.

"Tanks started firing at us,” he said. “As I ran back, I heard tank shells and gunfire. I heard people screaming. I saw people falling to the ground, some motionless.” Many were shot in the back, he said.

Soad Abu Hussein, a widow and mother of five, said more than 5,000 people — mostly women and children — living with her in a school at the Jabaliya refugee camp have not received aid for more than four weeks. A group of people went to the shore to fish, but three were killed and two were wounded by gunfire from Israeli ships, she said.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mansour Hamed, a 32-year-old former aid worker living with more than 50 relatives in a Gaza City house, said some are eating tree leaves and animal food. It has become normal to find a child emerging from the rubble with a rotten piece of bread, he said.

Acknowledging the extreme need for food, U.S. President Joe Biden said the U.S. would look for other ways of delivery “including possibly a marine corridor.”

Also Saturday, Israel said three soldiers were killed and 14 injured Friday when they inadvertently triggered explosives in a booby-trapped building outside Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

Biden pushing for Gaza ceasefire by Ramadan; White House says waiting on Hamas signoff

 Israel has essentially agreed to a six-week ceasefire in Gaza that would include the release of hostages, and negotiators are now waiting for Hamas to sign off on the deal, U.S. officials said Saturday.

“The ball is literally in the court of Hamas,” one official said.

The Israelis “have more or less accepted” the framework of a deal that would include a six-week ceasefire and the release of vulnerable hostages, including women, children and those who are elderly or wounded, said senior administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

President Joe Biden said Friday he hopes that a deal can be in place by the start of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which begins March 10. Biden is under pressure to call for a ceasefire as hunger and disease spread in Gaza after months of attacks by Israel following the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

The U.S. began airdropping humanitarian aid into the area on Saturday, days after over 100 Palestinians were killed when witnesses said Israeli forces fired at people waiting for food in Gaza City. Officials said the airdrops would make sure that food and other commodities get to people who need them and help prevent the looting that has plagued the delivery of goods into the region on the ground.

Over 30,000 Palestinians have died in Gaza since the start of the war after Hamas militants stormed southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking 250 others hostage.

Negotiations on a ceasefire deal are ongoing in Doha, Qatar, and significant progress has been made over the past few weeks, officials said.

“But like all things, until a deal is actually done, it’s not done,” one official said.

Hamas has yet to agree to the terms of the deal, officials said.

Biden spoke with the emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi about the framework of the deal and about other issues that still need to be resolved. The question, officials said, is whether Hamas is committed to releasing hostages as part of any agreement.

“The hostages have to be released,” one official said. “…Is Hamas committed to do that? That’s really the main issue now.”

Gaza famine 'almost inevitable': UN

One of the victims of a Gaza crowd that surged on humanitarian aid trucks. The UN says that famine is now almost inevitable.

Famine in the Gaza Strip is almost inevitable unless the Israel-Hamas war changes, the United Nations said Friday.

The UN and other humanitarian actors have not yet declared a state of famine in Gaza, despite worsening conditions in the Palestinian territory since the war started with the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7.

However, "once a famine is declared, it is too late for too many people", said Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA.

"We don't want to get to that situation and we need things to change before that," he told a briefing in Geneva.

Thousands have already died in the conflict. Hamas militants killed about 1,160 people in Israel on October 7, according to an AFP tally of Israeli figures.

Israel's retaliatory bombardment and ground offensive in Gaza have killed more than 30,000 people since, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

Humanitarian agencies say conditions for the 2.2 million people in Gaza are now dire.

"We have to look at what more and more voices, more and more loudly, are saying about the food security situation acros the Gaza Strip, in particular in the north," said Laerke.

"If something doesn't change, a famine is almost inevitable on the current trends."

In Somalia in 2011, when famine was officially declared, half of the total number of victims of the disaster had already died of starvation.

Laerke cited the near-total closure of commercial food imports, the "trickle of trucks" coming in with food aid, and the "massive access constraints" to moving around inside the Palestinian territory.

- 'High speed' famine -

"All these things combined lead us to this warning that we do have a very, very dire situation coming towards us at very high speed," he said.

World Health Organization spokesman Christian Lindmeier said that according to statistics compiled by the Hamas-run health ministry, 10 children have been "officially registered, in a hospital, as having starved to death".

"The unoffical numbers can unfortunately be expected to be higher," he told the briefing.

Laerke said seeing such warning signs were extremely worrying, particularly given than the food security before the war was relatively good.

The coastal territory had been producing its own food, but now, "the production of foodstuff within Gaza itself is almost impossible", including the key fishing industry which has "completely stopped".

"So the very foundation for people's daily sustenance is being ripped away," he said.

Israeli forces in war-ravaged Gaza opened fire Thursday as Palestinian civilians scrambled for food aid during a chaotic incident which the health ministry said killed more than 100 people.

The Israeli military said a "stampede" occurred when thousands of desperate Gazans surrounded a convoy of 38 aid trucks, leading to dozens of deaths and injuries, including some who were run over.

The UN was not involved in the convoy.

"People are so desperate for food, for fresh water, for any supplies, they risk their lives in getting any food, any supplies to support their children and themselves," Lindmeier said.

"This is the real catastrophe here: that food and supplies are so scarce that we see these situations."