The latest round of Gaza truce talks has seen some “progress” toward a possible cease-fire, the US has said, denying reports suggesting the negotiations were “near collapse.”

“There has been progress made. We need now for both sides to come together and work toward implementation,” US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said of ongoing Gaza cease-fire negotiations in Cairo, Egypt, on Friday.

Kirby said preliminary talks held Thursday had been “constructive.”

The presence of Israeli troops near the Egyptian border had reportedly emerged as a major sticking point impeding agreement to a pause in fighting between Israeli troops and Hamas militants in Gaza.

The White House said CIA Director William Burns had joined the heads of Israel’s intelligence and security agencies for the talks along with mediators from Egypt and Qatar. Hamas did not take part in the talks.

A representative from Hamas — considered a terror organization by Israel, the US, Germany and others — said the presence of Israeli troops at the Philadelphi Corridor on Gaza’s borders with Egypt was a sign of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s, “refusal to reach a final agreement.”

Kirby appealed again to Hamas to accept the proposal, which was laid out last week in talks in the Qatari capital Doha.

“Think about what this deal will do for the people of Gaza. It gets them a period of calm and a potential end of the war and the violence and the bloodshed,” Kirby said.

“It also gets them, because of the stop in the fighting, an incredible opportunity for all of us ― and I mean all of us, including the United States ― to dramatically increase the humanitarian assistance that’s getting in,” he said.

News website Axios meanwhile reported that US President Joe Biden asked Netanyahu “to pull Israeli forces back from part of the Egypt-Gaza border” during the first phase of the truce, citing three Israeli officials.

Source: DW NEWS