Israel has boycotted Gaza ceasefire talks in Cairo after Hamas rejected its demand for a complete list naming hostages who are still alive, an Israeli newspaper reports.

A Hamas delegation arrived in Cairo on Sunday for the talks, billed as a possible final hurdle before an agreement that would halt the fighting for six weeks.

But by early evening (local time), there was no sign of the Israelis.

“There is no Israeli delegation in Cairo,” Ynet, the online version of Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, quoted unidentified Israeli officials as saying.

“Hamas refuses to provide clear answers and therefore there is no reason to dispatch the Israeli delegation.”

Washington has insisted the ceasefire deal is close and should be in place in time to halt fighting by the start of Ramadan, a week away.

But the warring sides have given little sign in public of backing away from previous demands.

After the Hamas delegation arrived, a Palestinian official told Reuters the deal was “not yet there”.

From the Israeli side, there was no official comment.

One source briefed on the talks had said on Saturday that Israel could stay away from Cairo unless Hamas first presented its full list of hostages who are still alive.

A Palestinian source told Reuters Hamas had so far rejected that demand.

In past negotiations Hamas has sought to avoid discussing the wellbeing of individual hostages until after terms for their release are set.

“The path to a ceasefire right now literally at this hour is straightforward. And there’s a deal on the table. There’s a framework deal,” a US official said on Saturday.

Israel had agreed to the framework and it was now up to Hamas to respond, the official said.

The proposal

An agreement would bring the first extended truce of the war, which has raged for five months so far with just a week-long pause in November.

Dozens of hostages held by the militants would be freed in return for hundreds of Palestinian detainees.

Aid would be ramped up for Gazans pushed to the verge of famine.

Fighting would cease in time to head off a massive planned Israeli assault on Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are penned in against the enclave’s southern border fence abutting Egypt.

Israeli forces would pull back from some areas and let Gazans return to abandoned homes.

But the proposal appears to stop short of fulfilling the main Hamas demand for a permanent end to the war, while also leaving unresolved the fate of more than half of the more than 100 remaining hostages – including Israeli men not covered by terms to free women, children, the elderly and wounded.

Egyptian mediators have suggested those issues could be set aside for now, with assurances to resolve them in later stages. A Hamas source told Reuters the militants were still holding out for a “package deal”.

Most aid convoy deaths due to stampede – Israel

Israel’s military says most of the Palestinians killed last week as crowds massed near an aid convoy in Gaza died in a stampede but local health officials said casualties brought into hospitals had been hit by large-calibre ammunition.

Pressure has mounted on Israel over the deaths of dozens of Palestinians during a confused incident in the Gaza Strip on Thursday in which crowds surrounded a convoy of aid trucks and soldiers opened fire, with several countries backing a UN call for an inquiry.

Palestinian health officials say more than 100 people were killed in the incident in the early hours of the morning, most of them shot by Israeli troops.

Israeli officials have dismissed the figures given by the Palestinians but have not offered any estimates of their own.

On Sunday, Israel’s main military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari announced the result of a preliminary review which repeated earlier Israeli statements that most of those killed had been trampled underfoot as crowds rushed the aid trucks.

In addition “several individuals” were targeted as troops fired on people who approached them in the aftermath in a manner that suggested an immediate threat, he said, adding that an independent inquiry had been opened but giving no details.

Muatasem Salah, a member of the Emergency Committee at the Ministry of Health in Gaza, said there were more than 1000 casualties, dead and wounded, from the incident and he dismissed the findings of the Israeli review.

“Any attempt to claim that people were martyred due to overcrowding or being run over is incorrect.

The wounded and martyrs are the result of being shot with heavy-calibre bullets,” he told Reuters.

Giorgios Petropoulos, head of the Gaza sub-office of the UN Co-ordinator for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), who visited Gaza’s Shifa hospital on Thursday and Sunday, said he had seen “a huge, overrun emergency department” at the hospital where many of the wounded were treated.

“There were a lot of heavy injuries, there were many, many surgeries,” he told Reuters.

“One surgeon told me he had to do 18 surgeries just the first night.”

He said he had seen five or six people with bullet wounds including a young man shot in the right side of the chest who had taken himself to hospital as there were no ambulances.

In addition, a smaller number of people had injuries consistent with falling over or being trampled in the dark.

Many of Israel’s closest allies, including the US, have called for an inquiry into the incident, which underscored the dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the increasingly chaotic conditions in which the small amount of aid reaching the enclave is being distributed.

As the diplomatic fallout spread, the military said it had launched a more thorough examination of the incident to be handled by “an independent, professional and expert body” which will share its findings as early as in the coming days.

Hagari’s remarks suggested that some of the dead had been killed by Israeli fire after soldiers fired initial warning shots but he gave no details or figures.

“Following the warning shots fired to disperse the stampede and after our forces had started retreating, several looters approached our forces and posed an immediate threat to them.

According to the initial review, the soldiers responded toward several individuals,” he said.

-AAP