DOHA/GAZA  -  Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh on Sunday accused Israel’s prime minister of sabotaging efforts by mediators involved in ongoing talks aimed at a truce and hostage exchange in Gaza.

Qatar-based Haniyeh said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to “invent constant justifications for the continuation of aggression, expanding the circle of conflict, and sabotaging efforts made through various mediators and parties”. Qatari, Egyptian and US mediators met a Hamas delegation in Cairo on Saturday in the latest bid to halt the devastating almost seven-month-old war that has triggered worldwide protests.

A senior Hamas source close to the negotiations told AFP there would be “a new round” of talks on Sunday.

Negotiators seeking to halt the devastating war have proposed an initial 40-day pause in the fighting and an exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners.

Haniyeh said Hamas had approached the talks with “seriousness and positivity” but questioned “the meaning of an agreement if a ceasefire is not its first result”.

Earlier Netanyahu had rejected Hamas’s demand to end the war.

Israel was “not ready to accept a situation in which the Hamas battalions come out of their bunkers, take control of Gaza again, rebuild their military infrastructure, and return to threaten the citizens of Israel”, he said.

Egypt, Qatar and the United States have been trying to mediate an agreement between Israel and Hamas for months.

The Qatar-based leader of Hamas’s political office said the United States had “provided cover for this occupation, should be the one to stop it instead of supplying it with weapons of destruction and extermination”.

Haniyeh added that Hamas “remains eager to reach a comprehensive and interconnected agreement in stages, ending the aggression, ensuring withdrawal, and achieving a serious prisoner exchange deal”.

A local official and state media in Lebanon said an Israeli strike on a southern village on Sunday killed several people from the same family, with Hezbollah announcing rocket fire in retaliation.

Israel and Hezbollah groups have exchanged regular cross-border fire regularly.

Fighting has intensified in recent weeks, with Israel striking deeper into Lebanese territory, while Hezbollah has stepped up its missile and drone attacks on military positions in northern Israel.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said the strike in Mais al-Jabal killed “four people from a single family”, updating an earlier reported toll of three dead in the raid it said was carried out by Israeli aircraft.

It identified them as a man, a woman and their children aged 12 and 21, and said two other people were wounded.

A Lebanese security source, requesting anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media, confirmed the strike killed “four civilians”.

Mais al-Jabal municipality chief Abdelmoneim Shukair had earlier told AFP that three people were killed, saying they were a couple and their son.

Hezbollah in a statement said it fired “dozens of Katyusha and Falaq rockets” at Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel “in response to the horrific crime that the Israeli enemy committed in Mais al-Jabal”.

The Lebanese movement has repeatedly declared that only a ceasefire in Gaza will put an end to its attacks on Israel, which it says are in support of Gazans and its ally Hamas.

Both the United States and France have made diplomatic efforts to calm tensions on the Lebanese-Israeli border.

In Lebanon, at least 390 people have been killed in nearly seven months of cross-border violence, mostly militants but also more than 70 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

Israel says 11 soldiers and nine civilians have been killed on its side of the border.

Tens of thousands of people have been displaced on both sides.