Senior Hamas members will visit Cairo in the next few days to discuss a prisoner exchange deal with Israel brokered by Egypt, a Hamas official said today.
Hamas wants the deal to include the release of 1,000 named Palestinian prisoners in exchange for an Israeli soldier captured in a raid near Gaza in June involving Hamas's military wing.
Israel has pressed an offensive in the Gaza Strip for more than two months to try to recover a soldier who was abducted in a cross-border raid and to try to put a stop to rocket attacks across the border.
More than 200 Palestinians have been killed, about half of them civilians.