The new British foreign secretary has called for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza during a visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories, his second international trip since Labour's resounding victory in elections earlier this month.

David Lammy said Sunday the ongoing war in Gaza is "intolerable" and stressed in meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leadership that Britain wants to assist with diplomatic efforts "securing a cease-fire deal and creating the space for a credible and irreversible pathway towards a two-state solution."

A Syrian soldier was killed early on Sunday and three others injured in Israeli strikes on several positions in and around Damascus, Syrian state media said.

A Hamas official on Sunday said the group is pulling out of Gaza truce talks, following an Israeli strike that targeted the militants' commander Mohammed Deif, who was "fine" despite the attack according to another Hamas figure.

An Israeli official has confirmed that Mohammad Deif, the head of Hamas' military wing, was the target of Saturday's Israeli strike in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity pending a formal announcement, said Rafa Salama, another top Hamas official, was also targeted in the strike.

The United Nations chief has appealed for funding for the beleaguered U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees in Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East, accusing Israel of issuing evacuation orders that force Palestinians "to move like human pinballs across a landscape of destruction and death."

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a donor's conference that the agency, known as UNRWA, faces "a profound funding gap."

Hamas is suggesting during ceasefire negotiations that an independent government of non-partisan figures run post-war Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, a member of the Palestinian Islamist movement's political bureau said.

Gaza's civil defense agency said it found around 60 bodies after Israeli troops withdrew from parts of Gaza City on Friday, as heavy fighting gripped the Palestinian territory.

The grisly discovery came as international mediators pushed on with efforts to halt the war now raging into its 10th month.

A Dutch court on Friday rejected a claim from a group of human rights organizations that the Netherlands is dodging a court order to stop sending F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel which could use them in Gaza.

The Hague District Court ruled that Oxfam Novib, Pax Nederland and The Rights Forum had not shown any evidence that the Dutch government was ignoring the earlier ruling.

Dozens of bodies collected throughout a western neighborhood of Gaza City arrived at Al-Ahli Hospital on Friday morning as Palestinian emergency workers said they continued to unearth the dead throughout the neighborhood’s destroyed streets and buildings.

The hospital’s director, Fadel Naem, told The Associated Press that people both dead and wounded had been brought to the hospital from the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood, transported in groups of up to 10, amid sniper fire and the buzz of helicopters.

President Joe Biden acknowledged disappointments, missteps and frustrations with Israel’s hard-right government, but pointed to increased hopes now of a cease-fire to end the Israel-Hamas war devastating the lives of Gaza’s people.

Biden looked back Thursday over the course of his efforts in Israel’s war against Hamas during a much-watched press conference at the site of the just ended NATO summit.