GAZA STRIP (Dispatches) -- Israeli troops encountered fierce resistance from Palestinian fighters in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, who have continued to hit Zionist forces with mortar fire, the military said on Friday.
It said that seven small units that had been firing mortars at the troops. The Islamic Jihad armed wing said it fired rockets toward the southern city of Ashkelon and other occupied towns near Gaza.  
The continued fighting, more than nine months since the start of Israel’s invasion of Gaza following the Oct. 7 operation, underlined the difficulty the Zionist regime has had in the battle with fighters who have reverted to a form of guerrilla warfare in the ruins of the coastal strip.
A Telegram channel operated by the armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the two main resistance groups in Gaza, said fighters had been waging fierce battles with Israeli troops east of Khan Yunis with machine guns, mortars and anti-tank weapons.
Medics said at least six Palestinians were martyred in Israeli strikes in eastern Khan Yunis.
U.S. President Joe Biden, and Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for president, both urged prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to a proposed ceasefire deal as soon as possible.
However there has been no clear sign of movement in talks to end the fighting. Public statements from Israel and Hamas appear to indicate that serious differences remain between the two sides.
Israel is seeking changes to a plan for a Gaza truce and the release of captives by Hamas, complicating a final deal, according to a Western official, a Palestinian and two Egyptian sources.
Israel says that displaced Palestinians should be screened as they return to the enclave’s north when the ceasefire begins, retreating from an agreement to allow civilians who fled south to freely return home, the four sources told Reuters.
Israeli negotiators “want a vetting mechanism for civilian populations returning to the north of Gaza, where they fear these populations could support” Hamas fighters who remain entrenched there, said the Western official.
The Palestinian militant group rejected the new Israeli demand, according to the Palestinian and Egyptian sources.
Egyptian sources said there was another sticking point over Israel’s demand to retain control of Gaza’s border with Egypt, which Cairo dismissed as outside a framework for a final deal accepted by the two sides.
Harris on Thursday said she pressured Israel’s leader to help reach a Gaza ceasefire deal, striking a tougher tone
“Netanyahu is still stalling. There is no change in his stance so far,” said Hamas senior official Sami Abu Zuhri, who did not comment directly on Israel’s demands.
Word of the new sticking points came as Biden pressed for a ceasefire in talks in Washington on Thursday with Netanyahu on reaching a final deal.
“We are closer now than we’ve been before,” said White House national security spokesperson John Kirby, adding that gaps remained.
The framework calls for three phases, with the first seeing a six-week ceasefire and the release of women, elderly and wounded captives in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Talks on the second phase - which Biden calls “a permanent end to hostilities” - would continue in the first phase. Major reconstruction would begin in the third phase.
U.S. officials have said for weeks that a deal was close but that hurdles remained.
Israeli officials raised their demand for a mechanism to vet civilians returning to Gaza’s north at the last negotiating session in Cairo earlier this month, said the Western and Egyptian sources. This “wasn’t expected,” the Western official said.
The Zionists, the official and the three other sources said, also balked at withdrawing their forces from a nine-mile (14 km) strip of land along the border with
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