Pressure for truce deal builds as Gaza toll tops 40,000

Pressure built for a Gaza ceasefire to be agreed at talks that resumed Thursday in Qatar, aiming to stop the spread of a war that the Hamas-run territory's health ministry said has killed 40,000.

A source with knowledge of the talks confirmed to AFP that they had begun in the Qatari capital Doha.

The source did not disclose whether Hamas had dispatched any delegates to the talks which Israel and CIA director William Burns planned to attend.

In a veiled warning to Iran, Hamas and Israel ahead of the meetings, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said "no party in the region should take actions that would undermine efforts to reach a deal", the U.S. State Department said.

In a telephone call, the two discussed "efforts to calm" regional tensions "and the importance of finalising a ceasefire in Gaza", it said.

U.S., Qatari and Egyptian mediators invited Israel and Hamas for negotiations focused on ending the war that the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza on Thursday said has killed 40,005 people in the coastal territory.

The ministry said the toll included 40 deaths in the previous 24 hours.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk blamed Israel for the soaring death toll in the territory, where it launched a fierce assault in response to deadly attacks by Hamas militants in October.

"Today marks a grim milestone for the world," Turk said in a statement.

"Most of the dead are women and children. This unimaginable situation is overwhelmingly due to recurring failures by the Israeli Defense Forces to comply with the rules of war," he added.

"The scale of the Israeli military's destruction of homes, hospitals,...