By SAM METZ, JON GAMBRELL and SAMY MAGDY

JERUSALEM (AP) — A key mediator on Tuesday stressed the urgency of brokering a ceasefire in Gaza after Hamas showed a “positive response” to a proposal, but Israel has yet to weigh in as its military prepares an offensive on some of the territory’s most populated areas.

Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

The prospect of an expanded assault on areas sheltering hundreds of thousands of civilians has sparked condemnation inside Israel and abroad. Most war-weary Palestinians see no place in Gaza as safe, not even declared humanitarian zones, after 22 months of war.

Many Israelis, who rallied in the hundreds of thousands on Sunday, fear the offensive will further endanger the remaining hostages in Gaza. Just 20 of the 50 remaining are thought to be alive.

“If this (ceasefire) proposal fails, the crisis will exacerbate,” Majed al-Ansari, a spokesperson for Qatar’s foreign ministry, told journalists, adding they have yet to hear from Israel on it.

Witkoff is invited to rejoin the talks

Al-Ansari said Hamas had agreed to terms under discussion. He declined to provide details but said the proposal was “almost identical” to one previously advanced by U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff.

That U.S. proposal was for a 60-day ceasefire, during which some of the remaining hostages would be released and the sides would negotiate a lasting ceasefire and the return of the rest.

“If we get to a deal, it shouldn’t be expected that it would be instantaneously implemented,” al-Ansari said. “We’re not there yet.”

That cautious assessment came a day after the foreign minister of Egypt, the other Arab country mediating the talks, said they were were pushing for a phased deal and noted that Qatar’s prime minister had joined negotiations between Hamas leaders and Arab mediators.

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Witkoff has been invited to rejoin the talks, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty told The Associated Press. Witkoff pulled out of negotiations less than a month ago, accusing Hamas of not acting in good faith.

It was not clear how Witkoff has responded to the invitation.

Abdelatty held a series of phone calls Tuesday with foreign ministers from the United Kingdom, Turkey and the European Union seeking to put pressure on Israel to accept the ceasefire proposal.

“The ball is now in Israel’s court,” Abdelattay said in a statement.

A senior Israeli official said Tuesday that the country’s position on a ceasefire “is consistent and has not changed.”

“Israel demands the release of all 50 hostages in accordance with the guidelines set by the Cabinet to end the war,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said a final push is needed to “complete the defeat of Hamas.” He has vowed to continue the war until all the hostages are returned and Hamas has been disarmed.

28 Palestinians killed in Gaza

Hospitals in Gaza said they had received the bodies of 28 Palestinians killed Tuesday, including women and children, as Israeli strikes continued across the territory. Among them were nine people killed while seeking aid, officials at two hospitals told The Associated Press.

The deaths were recorded across Gaza, including in central Deir al-Balah, southern Khan Younis and near aid distribution points, hospital officials said.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an Israeli-backed private American contractor that has become the primary distributor of aid in Gaza since May, operates those sites. A GHF spokesperson said there were no incidents Tuesday related to its Netzarim corridor site. A hospital reported two deaths nearby.

Nasser Hospital also said an airstrike killed a mother, father and three children in their tent overnight in Muwasi, a camp for hundreds of thousands of civilians.

“An entire family was gone in an instant. What was their fault?” the children’s grandfather, Majed al-Mashwakhi, said, sobbing.

Israel’s military did not immediately respond to questions about the casualties reported by Nasser, Awda and al-Aqsa hospitals.

The Palestinian death toll in the war surpassed 62,000 on Monday, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals. The ministry does not say how many of the dead were civilians or combatants, but says women and children make up around half of them.

In addition to that toll, other Palestinians have died from malnutrition and starvation, including three reported in the past 24 hours, the ministry said Tuesday. It says 154 adults have died of malnutrition-related causes since late June, when it began counting such deaths, and 112 children have died of malnutrition-related causes since the war began with the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Aid groups continue to struggle to deliver supplies to Gaza, where most of the population is displaced, large swaths are in ruins and experts say the “worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out.”

Israel imposed a full blockade in March, then allowed limited aid to resume two and a half months later. The Israeli military body in charge of humanitarian aid to Gaza, COGAT, said 370 trucks of aid entered Tuesday — still below the 600 per day that the United Nations and partners say is needed.

A new attempt to deliver aid by sea

Israel has controlled all Gaza border crossings since seizing the Palestinian side of Rafah in May 2024. With land routes restricted, some countries have attempted to deliver supplies by air and sea.

Aid workers face mounting danger, the U.N. warned Tuesday. Its humanitarian office said a record 383 aid workers were killed worldwide in 2024, nearly half of them in Gaza.

COGAT said Tuesday that 180 pallets of aid were airdropped into Gaza with help from countries including Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and France. The U.N. and partners have called airdrops expensive, inefficient and even dangerous for people on the ground.

A ship carrying 1,200 tons of food left Cyprus on Tuesday for the Israeli port of Ashdod loaded with pasta, rice, baby food and canned goods that were pre-screened in Cyprus.

Magdy reported from Cairo and Gambrell from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed.

Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

A man fatally shot in St. Paul’s Frogtown over the weekend has been identified as a 26-year-old from Minneapolis.

Police responded to a shooting in the 300 block of Edmund Avenue about 4:15 a.m. Saturday. They found Levon T. Washington, who’d been shot and was lying in the street.

St. Paul Fire Department medics took Washington to Regions Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.

No one was under arrest as of Tuesday morning. Police are asking anyone with information to call them 651-266-5650.

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A man fatally shot in St. Paul’s Frogtown over the weekend has been identified as a 26-year-old from Minneapolis.

Police responded to a shooting in the 300 block of Edmund Avenue about 4:15 a.m. Saturday. They found Levon T. Washington, who’d been shot and was lying in the street.

St. Paul Fire Department medics took Washington to Regions Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.

No one was under arrest as of Tuesday morning. Police are asking anyone with information to call them 651-266-5650.

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By REBECCA BOONE, Associated Press

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Bryan Kohberger developed a reputation for being sexist and creepy while attending a criminal justice program in the months before he killed four University of Idaho students in 2022, fellow grad students told investigators.

His behavior was so problematic that one Washington State University faculty member told co-workers that if he ever became a professor, he would likely stalk or sexually abuse his future students, according to the documents. She urged her co-workers to cut Kohberger’s funding to remove him from the program.

“He is smart enough that in four years we will have to give him a Ph.D.,” the woman told her colleagues, according to the report from Idaho State Police Detective Ryan O’Harra. She continued, “Mark my word, I work with predators, if we give him a Ph.D., that’s the guy that in in that many years when he is a professor, we will hear is harassing, stalking, and sexually abusing … his students at wherever university.”

Bryan Kohberger is is seen in the Ada County Courthouse after his sentencing hearing, Wednesday, July 23, 2025, in Boise, Idaho, for brutally stabbing four University of Idaho students to death nearly three years ago. (AP Photo/Kyle Green, Pool)

Summaries of the interviews with students and instructors at Washington State University were included among more than 550 pages of investigation documents released by Idaho State Police last week in response to public record requests.

Kohberger was sentenced to life in prison without parole last month for the stabbing murders of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin at a rental home near the Moscow, Idaho, campus early on Nov. 13, 2022.

The WSU faculty member told investigators that Kohberger would sometimes go into an office where several female grad students worked, physically blocking the door. Sometimes, she would hear one of the women say, “I really need to get out of here,” so she would intercede by going into the office to allow the student to leave.

The faculty member believed Kohberger was stalking people. She told police that someone had reportedly broken into a female graduate student’s apartment in September or October, stealing perfume and underwear.

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An unnamed Ph.D. student who was in the same program as Kohberger told police that he enjoyed conflict, was disparaging toward women and that he especially liked to talk about sexual burglary — his field of study.

Some people in the department thought he was a possible future rapist and speculated that he might be an “incel,” she told the officer.

About three weeks after the murders, Kohberger told the Ph.D. student that whoever had committed the crimes “must have been pretty good,” Idaho State Police Detective Sgt. Michael Van Leuven wrote in a report. Kohberger also told the woman that the murders might have been a “one and done type thing,” Van Leuven wrote.

The woman “said she had never met anyone who acted in such a condescending manner and wondered why people in power in the department did not address his behavior,” Van Leuven wrote. “The way he spoke to females in the department was unsettling to them.”

One instructor told police that she was assigned to work with Kohberger on his doctoral program. In late August 2022, she said she began receiving complaints about him from students and staff in the criminal justice program.

The instructor told police that she spent “a lot of time” speaking about Kohberger during disciplinary meetings.

“The meetings focused around Kohberger’s interactions with fellow post-graduate students, in and out of the classroom, along with his behavior around some of the criminal justice professors,” according to an investigator’s report.

The school got nine separate complaints from faculty members, administration staffers and other students about his “rude and belittling behavior toward women,” Idaho State Police Detective Sean Prosser wrote in a report. In response, the school held a mandatory training class for all graduate students about behavior expectations.

Many of Kohberger’s fellow students and instructors at WSU did not suspect his involvement in the killings, according to the police reports. But at least one fellow student noticed his behavior changed after the murders.

The student said Kohberger frequently used his phone before the killings, but stopped bringing his cellphone to class after the murders. He also appeared more disheveled in the weeks after the killings, the student told police, and she thought it was odd that he never participated in conversations about the Moscow deaths.

She eventually called a police tip line to report that she had seen Kohberger with bloody knuckles just prior to the killings and his hand looked like he had been hitting something.

Associated Press reporter Corey Williams contributed from Detroit.