Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded Thursday that Israel retain control of key Gaza territory along the border with Egypt as part of any accord to suspend the war with Hamas.

The condition conflicts with Hamas's position that Israel must withdraw from all Gaza territory after a ceasefire.

Speaking after the return of Israeli negotiators from talks with mediators in Qatar, Netanyahu said Israel needed control to stop weapons reaching Hamas from Egypt -- one of four conditions for a deal with the Palestinian militants.

Just hours after the two-week offensive on Gaza City's Shujaiya district ended, Palestinians had already found 60 bodies as they picked through the piles of concrete and dust left behind, officials in Hamas-run Gaza said Thursday.

Families of missing residents and civil defence agency crews moved in for the grim search after Israel announced late Wednesday that it had ended its operation there against Hamas.

More than 60 news organizations, including some of the world's largest, signed an open letter Thursday calling on Israel to immediately end restrictions on international media entering and reporting on Gaza.

CNN, the BBC, Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press were among 64 media groups demanding greater access to the enclave that has faced a withering assault by Israel since Hamas's deadly October 7 assault.

Around 60 bodies were found under the rubble of a Gaza City neighbourhood, officials in the Hamas-run territory said Thursday, after Israel's military declared an end to its operation there.

The upsurge in fighting, bombardment and displacement in the eastern district of Shujaiya came as talks were held in mediator Qatar towards a truce and hostage release deal.

US President Joe Biden told reporters that his administration was "making progress" towards a ceasefire agreement as he called for an end to the Israel-Hamas war.

As bombs thunder in Gaza, just across the border in southern Israel truck driver Itzik waits in a barbed-wire protected parking lot for his delivery to clear inspection into the hunger-stricken territory.

He lists a lorry loaded with Gaza-bound eggs, chicken, sesame, spices, tea and coffee, all destined for private markets that Palestinians and humanitarian workers describe as unaffordable.

Aid meanwhile languishes on the other side of the Kerem Shalom crossing, with Israel and the United Nations trading blame for the logjam, and Gazans suffering the resulting shortages.

Hussein al-Naasan struggles to provide water for his family in the scorching summer, as aid funds have dried up and conditions deteriorated in impoverished displacement camps in Syria's rebel-held northwest.

"Water is life, it is everything... and now we are being deprived of water," Naasan told AFP from a camp near Sarmada, close to the Turkish border.

"It's like they are trying to kill us slowly," said the 30-year-old father of two, who has been displaced for more than a decade.

The Israeli army said Wednesday that it has completed its mission in Shujaiya, a neighbourhood in the east of Gaza that has been the scene of violent fighting for two weeks.

The military statement said the operations destroyed "eight tunnels" and "eliminated dozens of terrorists, destroyed combat compounds and booby-trapped buildings."

The offensive in Shujaiya, which involved elite Israeli units, expanded Monday into the centre of Gaza City.

Aid group Doctors Without Borders has warned of "critical" shortages of medical supplies in Gaza, with no resupply for more than two months as fighting between Israel and Hamas wears on.

The group known by its French initials MSF is "facing critical shortages of many things like gauze, gloves... things like that," Amber Alayyan, who works on the Palestinian territories for its French branch, told AFP on Tuesday.

Israel's army dropped thousands of leaflets over war-torn Gaza City on Wednesday urging all residents to flee a heavy offensive through the main city of the besieged Palestinian territory.

The leaflets, addressed to "everyone in Gaza City", set out designated escape routes and warned that the urban area, which had a pre-war population of over half a million, would "remain a dangerous combat zone".

Lying on her back, the sheep struggled as the man approached to bandage her udders, which had been burned in a fire last month that killed hundreds of sheep in southeast Turkey.

Since the fire, Hasan Kizil has been driving on hilly roads in his van, treating traumatised animals and convincing farmers not to sell injured sheep to the slaughterhouse.

The blaze ripped through the southeastern cities of Diyarbakir and Mardin on June 22, claiming 15 lives. Experts pointed to faulty wiring as a possible cause.