Middle East updates: WHO says Gaza baby contracted polio

The latest round of Gaza truce talks has seen some "progress" toward a possible cease-fire, the US has said, denying reports suggesting the negotiations were "near collapse."

"There has been progress made. We need now for both sides to come together and work toward implementation," US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said of ongoing Gaza cease-fire negotiations in Cairo, Egypt, on Friday.

Kirby said preliminary talks held Thursday had been "constructive."

The presence of Israeli troops near the Egyptian border had reportedly emerged as a major sticking point impeding agreement to a pause in fighting between Israeli troops and Hamas militants in Gaza.

The White House said CIA Director William Burns had joined the heads of Israel's intelligence and security agencies for the talks along with mediators from Egypt and Qatar. Hamas did not take part in the talks.

A representative from Hamas — considered a terror organization by Israel, the US, Germany and others — said the presence of Israeli troops at the Philadelphi Corridor on Gaza's borders with Egypt was a sign of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's, "refusal to reach a final agreement."

Kirby appealed again to Hamas to accept the proposal, which was laid out last week in talks in the Qatari capital Doha.

"Think about what this deal will do for the people of Gaza. It gets them a period of calm and a potential end of the war and the violence and the bloodshed," Kirby said.

"It also gets them, because of the stop in the fighting, an incredible opportunity for all of us ― and I mean all of us, including the United States ― to dramatically increase the humanitarian assistance that's getting in," he said.

News website Axios meanwhile reported that US President Joe Biden asked Netanyahu "to pull Israeli forces back from part of the Egypt-Gaza border" during the first phase of the truce, citing three Israeli officials.

World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that a 10-month-old baby in the Gaza Strip had contracted polio.

"I am gravely concerned that a 10-month-old unvaccinated child from Deir al-Balah, #Gaza, has been confirmed to have polio," Tedros said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, adding that this was "the first case in Gaza in 25 years."

"The child, who developed paralysis in the lower left leg, is currently in a stable condition," he said.

He said that "[g]enomic sequencing confirmed the virus is linked to the variant poliovirus type 2 detected in environmental samples collected in June from Gaza's wastewater."

He said that the Palestinian Health Ministry, the WHO and the UN children's agency UNICEF would "implement two rounds of polio vaccination in the coming weeks to halt transmission."

The WHO said earlier this month that it would send 1 million polio vaccines to Gaza after the virus was detected in the territory's sewage. However, it and other international organizations have stressed the difficulty of distributing the vaccine without the establishment of a cease-fire.

The International Rescue Committee has said that the virus has circulated due to the destruction of hospitals and water infrastructure during Israel's offensive in the Palestinian territory.

The Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip, ongoing for over ten months now, have killed over 40,000 Palestinians, health authorities in the Hamas-run enclave say. 

Israel's military campaign began after the militant Hamas group attacked Israel on October 7 last year. The attack resulted in 1,200 deaths and militants also took around 250 people hostage. Just under half of the hostages were released during a temporary cease-fire last November. 

Hamas is designated as a terrorist group by Israel, the US, Germany and others.

sdi/rmt (AP, AFP, Reuters, dpa)

Israeli negotiators were in the Egyptian capital Cairo for talks on a cease-fire deal in Gaza, media reports suggested on Friday.

Israel's troop presence on Gaza's southern border with Egypt remains one of the main points of contention.

Mossad spy agency chief David Barnea and Shin Bet domestic security service chief Ronen Bar were in Cairo "negotiating to advance a hostage [release] agreement," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's spokesman Omer Dostri told the French AFP news agency.

Hamas official Hossam Badran told AFP that Netanyahu's insistence that Israeli troops remain on the Philadelphi border strip reflects the politician's "refusal to reach a final agreement."

Mediators Egypt, Qatar and the United States aim to reach a cease-fire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas.

German airline Lufthansa said it was extending a suspension of flights to the Lebanese capital Beirut up to and including September 30.

Flights to Tel Aviv, Israel and to Iranian capital Tehran will be suspended until September 2.

Previously suspended services to Jordan's capital Amman and the city of Erbil, which serves as the seat of government of northern Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region, will resume on August 27.

Airlines had suspended flights to several Middle East destinations due to rising tensions between Israel and Iran related to the war in Gaza, as well as the risk of all-out war between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group.