Israel said it remained committed to the Gaza ceasefire framework on Wednesday morning despite killing more than 100 people in strikes across the enclave.
The Israeli strikes followed the killing of an Israeli soldier by gunmen and Hamas’s delay in returning the bodies of Israeli hostages.
Despite the renewed ceasefire, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) carried out a drone strike on a site in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, which it said targeted a weapons and drone storage site that was being used by militants for an “imminent” attack.
According to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza, 104 people, including 46 children, were killed in the Israeli attacks that began on Tuesday night after the Israeli soldier was killed in Rafah. Israel said the soldier died after gunmen emerged from tunnel shafts and opened fire on troops in the area under Israeli control. Hamas denied any link to the gunmen.
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Residential blocks, homes and school buildings were hit in Gaza City and Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, Bureij and Nuseirat in the centre, and Khan Younis in the south.
The IDF said 30 “terrorists holding command positions” within Palestinian militant groups had been killed. “There is and will be no immunity for anyone in the leadership of the terrorist organisation Hamas – neither those in suits nor those hiding in tunnels,” defence minister Israel Katz said in a statement.
The militant group described the Israeli air strikes as a “blatant violation” of the ceasefire, while also noting several Israeli strikes in recent days and the closure of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.
UN high commissioner for human rights Volker Türk said the reports of so many people being killed were “appalling”. He called on all sides not to let the opportunity for peace “slip from our grasp”.
In response to Israeli air strikes, US president Donald Trump said that nothing would jeopardise the Gaza ceasefire, adding that Israel has a right to “hit back”. If Hamas militants do “not behave”, he warned, “they will be terminated”.
Qatari prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, who has acted as a mediator, said the attack on the soldier and subsequent Israeli air strikes were “very disappointing and frustrating for us”. Speaking at a conference in New York he said that the mediators are pushing Hamas and all Palestinian factions in Gaza to “to get to a point where they acknowledge that they need to disarm”.
Israel believes that Hamas is deliberately holding up the return of the remains of the hostages to avoid moving to the second phase of the ceasefire, when it will be required to disarm.
Hamas said it would transfer the bodies of two more hostages – of the 13 remaining in Gaza – but it was not clear when this would take place.
Hamas claims it cannot locate all of the bodies because some are buried under rubble.
The Red Cross issued a statement criticising Hamas for staging the recovery of the remains of a hostage in Gaza on Tuesday, saying it is “unacceptable to stage a fake recovery when so much depends on the implementation of this agreement”.
The statement came in response to IDF drone footage showing what it said were Hamas operatives placing the partial remains of a previously released hostage in a pit before covering it with earth and then alerting the Red Cross to say a body had been found.
Far-right ministers in the governing coalition have called on Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu to resume the war.
“Once again, Hamas murders one of our soldiers during a ‘ceasefire’, and the prime minister chooses to conclude the incident with a ‘measured response’ and an immediate return to the ceasefire,” said national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
