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Democratic and Republican senators in the United States are working through the weekend to find a compromise and end the longest government shutdown in the country’s history.

But the bipartisan talks yielded few signs of progress on Saturday as the workday ended without a deal on reopening the government.

The Senate is set to try again with a rare Sunday session.

The impasse has now lasted 39 days and is taking an increasing toll on the country as federal workers go unpaid, airlines cancel flights, and food aid has been delayed for millions of Americans.

Saturday’s session got off to a rough start when President Donald Trump made clear he is unlikely to compromise any time soon with Democrats, who are seeking a one-year extension on an expiring health insurance subsidy under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare.

Trump urged Republican senators on social media to redirect federal money used to subsidise health insurance premiums towards direct payments to individuals.

“I am recommending to Senate Republicans that the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE SO THAT THEY CAN PURCHASE THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTHCARE, and have money left over,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, without offering details.

The ACA marketplaces allow people to buy policies directly from health insurers and mainly serve people who do not have coverage through employers or the Medicare and Medicaid government programmes.

Some 24 million people in the US use those subsidies.

For those enrolled in ACA exchanges, premiums, on average, are expected to more than double next year if Congress allows the enhanced subsidies to lapse.

Democrats demand that Republicans agree to negotiate an extension of federal healthcare subsidies before reopening the government. Republicans say the government must reopen first.

‘Another path forward’

Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire, who is leading the talks among moderates, said on Friday evening that Democrats “need another path forward” after Republicans rejected the offer from Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York to reopen the government and extend the subsidies for a year.

Shaheen and others, negotiating among themselves and with some rank-and-file Republicans, have been discussing bills that would pay for parts of government – food aid, veterans programmes and the legislative branch, among other things – and extend funding for everything else until December or January.

The agreement would only come with the promise of a future healthcare vote, rather than a guarantee of extended subsidies.

It was unclear whether enough Democrats would support such a plan. Even with a deal, Trump appears unlikely to support an extension of the health benefits. House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson also said this week that he would not commit to a health vote.

Republicans hold a 53-47 majority but need 60 votes to reopen the government.

Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna, reporting from Washington, DC, described the Senate’s weekend session as “very unusual”.

“But no vote was taken in the course of the day. The Republicans are not wanting to hold a vote unless they are certain that they can get those 60 votes needed to pass a legislation or change the procedure,” Hanna said.

Trump, for his part, has once again urged the Republicans to end the filibuster, which requires agreement by 60 of the Senate’s 100 members to pass most legislation.

“The Republicans could do this with a simple majority,” Hanna said. “However, Republicans are concerned about doing this because they feared that the lack of an investor would act against them, if… the Democrats take power in the Senate.”

With the Republicans rejecting Trump’s call, Senate Republican Leader John Thune is eyeing a bipartisan package that mirrors the proposal the moderate Democrats have been sketching out. What Thune, who has refused to negotiate, might promise on healthcare is unknown.

The package would replace the House-passed legislation that the Democrats have rejected 14 times since the shutdown began on October 1. The current bill would only extend government funding until November 21.

A test vote on new legislation could come in the next few days if Thune decides to move forward.

Then the Democrats would have a crucial choice: Keep fighting for a meaningful deal on extending the subsidies that expire in January, while prolonging the pain of the shutdown; or vote to reopen the government and hope for the best, as Republicans promise an eventual healthcare vote but not a guaranteed outcome.

Schumer on Saturday persisted in arguing that Republicans should accept a one-year extension of the subsidies before negotiating the future of the tax credits.

Nearly a month after the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, the death toll in Gaza is still rising amid reports of more killings, as the ongoing search for bodies from under the rubble continues.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza said on Saturday that the total number of people killed in the enclave since October 7, 2023, had risen to 69,169, after more of the dead were identified and more bodies recovered.

Israeli attacks have killed more than 240 Palestinians since the ceasefire deal came into effect last month, the ministry said.

On Saturday, there were reports of yet more killings. The Israeli military said that it killed one Palestinian who had crossed the so-called yellow line and approached Israeli soldiers operating in northern Gaza.

The yellow line is a demarcation line to which Israeli forces agreed to withdraw under the United States-brokered truce to end the war.

The Israeli army said it killed another Palestinian in southern Gaza, who had also crossed the yellow line and allegedly “posed an immediate threat” to its troops.

Israel has continued to fire at Palestinians, including families, who approach the demarcation line.

Adding to the death toll, a Palestinian child was killed after an explosive device left behind by Israeli forces in the city of Khan Younis detonated, according to Nasser Hospital.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) called for the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt to be reopened for urgent medical evacuations.

About 4,000 Palestinian patients have left Gaza through Rafah for treatment in Egypt and elsewhere, with another 16,500 patients still waiting to get medical care abroad, according to the WHO.

“The Rafah crossing is a vital exit for medical evacuations and a key entry for health supplies into Gaza. Egypt remains one of the main destinations for patients needing urgent care,” the agency wrote in a social media post.

Military and settler raids intensify

In the occupied West Bank, military raids and settler attacks continued in an apparent drive to force Palestinians from their land, as part of the Israeli government’s illegal settlement expansion across the territory.

Israeli settlers attacked a group of Palestinian villagers, activists and journalists who had gathered on Saturday to harvest olives in the town of Beita, south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank.

Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli anti-apartheid activist, who was helping Palestinians harvest their olives, described to Al Jazeera how a group of dozens of masked Israeli settlers attacked with clubs.

The settlers descended from a hill and “started hurling … huge rocks at us, and we had to flee”, Pollak told Al Jazeera.

He said the assault led to more than a dozen injuries that required medical attention, including a journalist who was bludgeoned by the settlers, and a 70-year-old activist who had his cheekbone and jaw broken.

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said in a statement that five journalists – Ranin Sawafteh, Mohammed al-Atrash, Louay Saeed, Nasser Ishtayeh and Nael Bouaitel – were injured in the assault.

The syndicate condemned the attack, calling it a “war crime aimed at killing them”.

The Reuters news agency confirmed that two of its employees, a journalist and a security adviser accompanying her, were among those injured in the attack.

Israeli settlers have been carrying out near-daily assaults on Palestinian farmers and their lands during this year’s olive harvest in the occupied West Bank, targeting one of the most vital symbols of Palestinian heritage and livelihood.

The harvest comes amid a wave of settler violence. The United Nations says at least 126 attacks have been recorded since September in 70 towns and villages, with more than 4,000 olive trees and saplings vandalised or uprooted.

On Saturday, Israeli settlers also attacked Palestinian homes in the village of Raba, southeast of Jenin, under the protection of armed Israeli soldiers, who entered the village at the same time as the attacks, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.

The military also ramped up its attacks on Saturday, shooting and injuring a man during a raid in the Far’a refugee camp, south of Tubas, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

Soldiers arrested a 13-year-old in the town of Yabad, near Jenin, after beating him in the street, and a young man in the town of al-Mazraa ash-Sharqiya, near Ramallah.

Separately, in ar-Ram, north of occupied East Jerusalem, a Palestinian man was shot in the leg near Israel’s separation wall and transferred to a medical facility in Ramallah, according to Wafa.

The United Nations Human Rights Office in Sudan says that “brutal attacks” are escalating in el-Fasher after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized the city in the western region of Darfur last month.

“Over the past 10 days, el-Fasher has witnessed an escalation of brutal attacks. It has become a city of grief,” Li Fung, the UN’s human rights representative in Sudan, said in a video published on X on Saturday.

“Civilians who survived 18 months of siege and hostilities are now enduring atrocities of an unimaginable scale,” she said.

“Hundreds have been killed, including women, children and the wounded, who sought safety in hospitals and schools. Entire families were cut down as they fled. Others have simply vanished.”

The warning comes as aid groups said that thousands of people who fled the capital of North Darfur state face dire conditions in the town of Tawila.

Adam Rojal, the spokesperson for the Sudan’s IDPs and Refugee Camps aid group, told the Associated Press (AP) news agency that more than 16,000 people had arrived in Tawila, with many in desperate need of food, medicine, shelter materials and psychological support.

Video footage from the aid group showed displaced people in a barren area with barely enough tents, many of them improvised from patched tarps and sheets. Rojal said that some families were surviving on just one meal a day.

On Friday, Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, reported “extremely high levels of malnutrition among children and adults”.

Mathilde Vu, the advocacy manager for the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in Sudan, told the AFP news agency that many families arriving in Tawila came with “children who are not their own”.

“That means that they have to come with children who have lost their parents on the way, either because they’ve been disappeared, disappeared in a chaos, or they’ve been detained, or they’ve been killed,” she said.

Tawila is just one of several locations to which people fled after the RSF took over el-Fasher, the last Sudanese military stronghold in Sudan’s western Darfur region, on October 26.

A report from Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab on October 28 found evidence of “mass killings”, including apparent pools of blood that were visible in satellite imagery.

The International Organization for Migration estimates that about 82,000 people had fled the city and surrounding areas as of November 4, heading to Tawila, Kebkabiya, Melit and Kutum.

El-Fasher had a population of approximately 260,000 before the RSF takeover. The UN’s human rights chief, Volker Turk, said on Friday that civilians still trapped there were being prevented from leaving.

“I fear that the abominable atrocities such as summary executions, rape and ethnically motivated violence are continuing within the city,” he added.

El-Obeid braces for RSF assault

As the humanitarian crisis in Darfur spirals, the conflict has spread to the neighbouring Kordofan region.

Early this week, a drone attack in el-Obeid, the capital of the North Kordofan province, killed at least 40 people and wounded dozens more.

A military official speaking on condition of anonymity told the AP on Saturday that the army intercepted two Chinese-made drones targeting el-Obeid on Saturday morning.

Locals’ fears of an RSF assault have been heightened by the group’s recent capture of the town of Bara, located about 60km (36 miles) north, which had prompted more than 36,000 people to flee the town, according to the UN.

El-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan state, sits on a key supply route linking Darfur and Khartoum, which is roughly 400km (250 miles) away.

Its takeover would be a strategic prize for the RSF, which has been at war with Sudan’s army since April 2023.

Ceasefire proposal

At least 40,000 people have been killed by the conflict, according to the World Health Organization. Aid groups say the true death toll could be many times higher.

After two years of war, there appears to be no sign of de-escalation, despite a truce proposal put forward by the Quad, a group comprising international mediators – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the United States.

On Thursday, the RSF had responded positively to the idea, though the following day, explosions were reported in the Khartoum area and the town of Atbara to the north of the capital – both are held by the army.

The ceasefire plan would see a three-month humanitarian pause, followed by a permanent ceasefire that would ostensibly pave the way for an eventual political transition to civilian government.

However, the government, backed by the army, which controls most of Sudan’s north, east and centre, including Khartoum, has yet to publicly respond to the proposal.

On Saturday, Darfur Governor Minni Arko Minnawi said on X that any ceasefire that did not provide for the RSF’s withdrawal would mean Sudan’s division.