The CIA has assessed that the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, is coming under increased pressure from his own military commanders to accept a ceasefire deal and end the war with Israel, CIA Director Bill Burns told a closed-door conference on Saturday, according to a source who attended.

Sinwar, the key architect of the October 7 massacre in Israel, is not “concerned with his mortality” but is facing pressure about being blamed for the enormity of the suffering in Gaza, Burns said at the conference, the source said.

US intelligence officials believe Sinwar is hiding in the tunnels beneath his birthplace, Khan Younis in Gaza, and is the key decision maker for Hamas on whether to accept a deal.

Burns – who for months has conducted feverish negotiations as the Biden administration’s point person – said it was incumbent on both the Israeli government and Hamas to take advantage of this moment, more than nine months since the war started, to reach a ceasefire.

But the internal pressure Sinwar is now facing is new in the past two weeks, including the calls from his own senior commanders who are tiring of the fight, Burns said, according to the attendee who was granted anonymity to discuss the off-the-record conference.

The CIA director was speaking at the annual Allen & Company summer retreat in Sun Valley, Idaho, sometimes called a “summer camp for billionaires” because of its glitzy guest list of tech moguls, media titans and senior government officials who are invited to the secretive week-long event.

The CIA declined to comment.

The increased pressure on Sinwar comes as Hamas and Israel have agreed to a framework deal that that President Joe Biden laid out at the end of May. That’s what US officials have said is being used as the basis to an agreement to end the fighting.

Burns had just returned from his latest trip last week to the Middle East to try to further the negotiations over a Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal, meeting with mediator counterparts from Qatar and Egypt, as well as Israel’s head of foreign intelligence.

On Saturday Burns said that there is a “fragile possibility before us” and that the chances of a ceasefire being agreed are greater than they have been, months after a brief temporary truce saw dozens of hostages freed in November. But he emphasized that the final stage of negotiations are always difficult.

The renewed push comes after the previous discussions fell apart in May following a similar flurry of meetings and travel by Burns in the region.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also facing immense domestic pressure to strike a deal that would bring home the remaining hostages held in Gaza. Thousands of Israeli protesters regularly take to the streets of Tel Aviv demanding the government focus on the return of the hostages rather than the military campaign.

‘Gaps to close’

“There are still gaps to close, but we’re making progress, the trend is positive,” Biden said on Thursday, “and I’m determined to get this deal done and bring an end to this war, which should end now.”

Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 38,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. Thousands are believed missing under the rubble and hundreds of thousands more face disease, famine and lack of shelter, according to aid organizations.

Beyond the enormous amount of detail being hashed out in the potential agreement, talks are routinely slowed by the difficulties of getting messages to and from Sinwar as Israel tries to hunt him down.

Of the three most senior Hamas leaders in Gaza, Israel is believed to have found and killed just one: Marwan Issa, the second in command of the military wing. Its military chief, Mohammed Deif, was targeted by Israel in a bombing on Saturday that killed almost 100 Palestinians and wounded hundreds more, according to Palestinian health officials.

Neither Israel nor the US has determined whether Deif was successfully targeted.

US officials believe that Sinwar no longer wants to rule Gaza and both Israel and Hamas have signed on to an “interim governance” plan that would begin in the second phase of a ceasefire in which neither of them would control Gaza, a US official told CNN.

Qatar has also made clear they would kick out Hamas’ political leadership from their longtime external base if the militant group doesn’t sign on to the plan, US officials say.

In Hamas communications seen and reported recently by the Associated Press, senior Hamas leaders inside Gaza called on external figures from the group to accept Biden’s ceasefire proposal, citing heavy losses and dire conditions in Gaza.

Perhaps an indication of their eagerness to end the fighting, Hamas recently backed off their key demand that a ceasefire agreement include assurances it would then lead to a permanent ceasefire, long a sticking point in the talks that Israel had refused.

Netanyahu then insisted that any deal must allow Israel to return to fighting until its war objectives are met.

That means a pause in the fighting could start, which would see both some Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners released, before Israel re-launches military operations.

The framework Biden proposed says that a permanent ceasefire would be negotiated during the first phase of a pause in the fighting, which would continue as long as negotiations do.

On the same day the Burns was speaking, Netanyahu said at a news conference that he would not move “one millimeter” from the framework laid out by Biden while claiming Hamas had requested 29 changes to the proposal, but he refused to make any.

There are still “tough issues to resolve,” a source familiar with the talks told CNN after Burns’ meetings in Doha. A second source agreed, saying there’s “still a long time to go.”

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Israel claims top Hamas leader killed in deadly Gaza airstrike

Israel on Sunday said Rafa Salama, a top commander from the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, was confirmed killed in a deadly airstrike which the Hamas-run health authorities in Gaza said hit a refugee camp, leaving at least 90 people dead.

Hamas meanwhile denied reports that negotiations on a ceasefire and the return of remaining hostages have broken down in the Qatari capital Doha in the wake of the attack.

Salama was a key target of Saturday's strike along with Mohammed Deif, the leader of Hamas' military wing in Gaza. The pair have been described by Israel as "masterminds of the massacre on October 7," which sparked the current conflict.

A statement from the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said Salama was "eliminated" but made no mention of Deif.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu previously stated that there was still no absolute certainty about Deif's fate, while a Hamas representative in the Lebanese capital Beirut on Sunday said Deif was not killed.

The IDF described Salama as one of Deif's closest associates and said his death would seriously impair Hamas' military capabilities. Salama commanded the Khan Younis Brigade in southern Gaza and was responsible for numerous rocket strikes carried out against Israel in recent years, the IDF said.

Palestinian medics said the strike on Saturday killed at least 90 people and left hundreds injured after tents for displaced people in the al-Mawasi camp were hit.

The IDF said the attack "was carried out in a fenced-in area controlled by Hamas and where, according to [IDF] information, only Hamas terrorists and no civilians were present."

No breakdown in negotiations

Despite the deadly airstrike, Hamas on Sunday maintained that indirect negotiations with Israel over a ceasefire deal are still ongoing.

According to Israeli media reports, the head of the Israeli foreign intelligence service, Daniel Barnea, plans to travel to the Qatari capital Doha in the coming days for another round of talks.

The negotiations, which have continued for months, centre on the exchange of the remaining hostages held by Hamas for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, as well as a ceasefire in the Gaza conflict.

The indirect talks are progressing slowly, with Israel continuing to reject Hamas' demand for a permanent ceasefire.

Hamas says 15 dead after airstrike on refugee camp

Also on Sunday, Hamas said that some 15 people were killed and dozens injured in an airstrike on a school in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the centre of the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military previously said it had targeted several Hamas fighters in the area of a school belonging to the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which they say was being used by Hamas as a hideout and operations base.

The Israeli army had taken numerous steps to minimize the risk to civilians, they added.

The claims from both sides could not be independently verified.

It comes after a recent Israeli airstrike on a school building in Nuseirat where the army said several militants had been hiding out. According to the Israeli military, precision ammunition was used to minimize civilian casualties.

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What we know about the bomb Israel used on Gaza 'safe zone'

Palestinians look at a huge crater in the sand following an Israeli military strike on the al-Mawasi camp for displaced people in the Gaza Strip

Israel's deadly strike on Al-Mawasi, one of the bloodiest attacks in more than nine months of war in Gaza, used massive payload bombs provided by the United States, according to weapons experts.

The bombing of the Israeli-declared "safe zone" transformed the tent city on the Mediterranean coast into a charred wasteland, with nearby hospitals overrun with casualties.

According to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, the barrage killed at least 92 people and wounded more than 300.

The Israeli military said it targeted two "masterminds" of the October 7 attacks by Hamas that triggered the war. It said a top commander, Rafa Salama, was killed in the strike, but uncertainty remains over Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif.

AFP videos of the attack showed a white mushroom cloud billowing over a busy street, leaving behind a huge crater strewn with the wreckage of tents and a building blown to bits.

Here is what we know about the weaponry used in the attack:

- US-made JDAM -

Two weapons experts told AFP that a sliver of munition seen in a video of the blast site circulating online was a tail fin from a US-made Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM). AFP could not independently verify the video.

The GPS-aided kit converts unguided free-fall bombs -- so-called "dumb bombs" -- into precision-guided "smart" munitions that can be directed towards single or multiple targets.

The United States developed the kit to improve accuracy in adverse weather after Operation Desert Storm in 1991.

The first JDAMs were delivered in 1997 and, according to the US Air Force, have a 95 percent system reliability.

Trevor Ball, a former US Army explosive ordnance disposal technician, concluded from images of the Al-Mawasi strike "it's 100 percent a JDAM kit" made in the United States.

He said that given the types of bombs compatible with the guidance system and the size of the fin fragment, the JDAM was most likely used with either a 1,000 or 2,000 pound (450 or 900 kilogramme) payload.

He said the fragment could also be compatible with the BLU-109 "bunker buster" warhead, which is designed to penetrate concrete.

Ball said it was not possible to definitively determine where the payload itself was made without "very specific fragments of the bomb body".

- New delivery -

Repeated use of such large bombs in the densely populated Gaza Strip has sparked humanitarian outcry and heaped pressure on US President Joe Biden to reconsider the munitions supplied to Israel.

On July 12, Israel's main military backer announced it was ending a pause on supplying 500-pound bombs, though Biden said the 2,000-pound type would be withheld.

The White House has repeatedly voiced frustration over the civilian death toll in Gaza as Israel attempts to eradicate Hamas.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told two top Israeli officials on Monday that the civilian toll was "unacceptably high", his spokesman said.

Israeli officials said their "precise strike" in Al-Mawasi hit an open area that housed a Hamas compound and not a civilian camp.

When contacted by AFP regarding the weapons used, the Israeli military declined to comment.

Based on Israel's stated target, Wes Bryant, a retired US Air Force master sergeant and strike and joint targeting expert, said it would have been feasible to avoid collateral damage in the surrounding area.

"My assessment is that any civilians killed in this strike were in the compound -— not in the surrounding vicinity. So the IDF either failed to assess presence of civilians, or... deemed the risk to civilians proportional to the military advantage of taking out the Hamas leaders."

- 'Absolute destruction' -

The strike left Al-Mawasi a scene of "absolute destruction" with no water, electricity or sewage treatment, the Islamic Relief charity said.

It condemned Israel for its willingness "to kill innocent men, women and children in pursuit of its end goals".

Hamas said that by arming Israel, the Biden administration is "legally and morally responsible" for spawning a "major humanitarian catastrophe".

It said US-supplied weapons used by Israel included GPS-guided bombs, dumb bombs, bunker busters and JDAMs.

After repeated high-casualty strikes in recent days, a Hamas official said the group was withdrawing from indirect talks for a truce and hostage release deal with Israel.

The war was sparked by Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

Israel responded with a military offensive that has killed at least 38,664 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-ruled territory's health ministry.

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