Negotiations in Doha for a Gaza truce and hostage release deal are in their "final stages", says Qatar's foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari in a press conference. Qatar, Egypt and the United States have stepped up efforts to broker a ceasefire to enable the release of hostages held in Gaza since Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures. Israel's retaliatory campaign in Gaza has killed 46,645 people, a majority of them civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures that the UN considers reliable.
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00:00We do believe that we are at a developed stage, we do believe that we are at the final stages,
00:04but obviously until there is an announcement, there will be no announcement.
00:07And therefore we shouldn't be over-excited about what's happening right now,
00:11but certainly we are hopeful that this would lead very soon to an agreement.
00:16So the main reason why we are more optimistic right now is, as I said,
00:19during the past months there were underlying issues, major issues, between the two parties unresolved.
00:25These issues were resolved during the talks in the past couple of weeks,
00:29and therefore we have reached a point where the major issues that were preventing a deal from happening
00:34were addressed and we have language pertaining to these issues that has been distributed between both parties.