In the last 24 hours, 71 were killed and 112 were injured in what the ministry called three “massacres” by Israel in the strip.
The recent war in Gaza started after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel claims it goes out of its way to avoid civilian casualties and accuses Hamas of using human shields, an allegation the group denies.
The US and other mediators see a ceasefire in Gaza as key to averting a wider Mideast war.
Hezbollah has said it will halt its strikes on Israel if there is a ceasefire.
Egypt was hosting high-level talks in Cairo on Sunday aimed at bridging the gaps in a proposal for a truce and the release of scores of hostages held by Hamas.
The talks include CIA director William Burns and David Barnea, the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency.
Hamas sent a delegation to be briefed by Egyptian and Qatari mediators but did not directly participate in negotiations.
On the ground in Gaza, witnesses said battles raged in the area of Deir Al-Balah, in Gaza’s central region.
Hamas said on Sunday that it rejects new Israeli conditions put forward in Gaza ceasefire talks, casting further doubt on the chances of a breakthrough in the latest US-backed effort to end the 10-month-old war.
Months of on-off talks have failed to produce an agreement to end Israel’s devastating military campaign in Gaza or free the remaining hostages seized by Hamas in the militant group’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel that triggered the war.
Key sticking points in ongoing talks mediated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar include an Israeli presence in the so-called Philadelphi Corridor, a narrow 14.5 km-long (nine-mile) stretch of land along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt.
Hamas said Israel has backtracked on a commitment to withdraw troops from the Corridor and put forward other new conditions, including the screening of displaced Palestinians as they return to the enclave’s more heavily populated north when the ceasefire begins.
“We will not accept discussions about retractions from what we agreed to on July 2 or new conditions,” Hamas official Osama Hamdan told the group’s Al-Aqsa TV on Sunday.
In July, Hamas accepted a US proposal to begin talks on releasing Israeli hostages, including soldiers and men, 16 days after the first phase of an agreement aimed at ending the Gaza war, a senior Hamas source has told Reuters.
Hamdan also said Hamas has handed to mediators its response to the latest proposal, saying US talk of an imminent deal is false.Israel’s military on Sunday said polio vaccines for more than 1 million people had been delivered to Gaza, after the first confirmed case of the disease in the territory in a quarter-century.
It was not immediately clear how, or how quickly, the more than 25,000 vials of vaccine would be distributed in Gaza, where ongoing fighting and unrest have challenged humanitarian efforts during more than 10 months of war.
Other polio cases are suspected across the largely devastated territory after the virus was detected in wastewater in six different locations in July.
Aid groups plan to vaccinate more than 600,000 children under age 10 and have called for an urgent pause in the war to increase vaccinations. The World Health Organization and the United Nations children’s agency have said that, at a minimum, a seven-day pause is needed.
The UN has aimed to bring 1.6 million doses of polio vaccine into Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are crowded into tent camps lacking clean water or proper disposal of sewage and garbage. Families sometimes use wastewater to drink or clean dishes.
Polio is highly contagious and transmits mainly through contact with contaminated feces, water or food. It can cause difficulty breathing and irreversible paralysis, usually in the legs. It strikes young children in particular and is sometimes fatal.
The new statement by the Israeli military body responsible for Palestinian civilian affairs said five trucks with special refrigeration equipment for vaccine storage were brought into Gaza on Friday in coordination with the UN The vaccines arrived Sunday.
The statement said vaccinations will be conducted by international and local medical teams at “various locations” in Gaza, in coordination with Israel’s military as part of “routine humanitarian pauses” to allow people to reach health centers.
The statement said more than 282,000 vials of the polio vaccine have been brought into Gaza since the war began in early October.
The territory’s health care system has been devastated, and workers are overwhelmed. Only about a third of Gaza’s 36 hospitals and 40 percent of its primary health care facilities are functioning, according to the UN But the WHO and UNICEF say their vaccination campaign will be carried out in every municipality in Gaza, with help from 2,700 workers.
Before the war, 99 percent of Gaza’s population was vaccinated against polio. That figure is now 86 percent, according to the WHO.
