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Israel launches strikes on Gaza as fighting resumes after truce expires Israel launches strikes on Gaza as fighting resumes after truce expires
(about 4 hours later)
Gaza health officials says 109 people killed as Israel blames Hamas for breaking truceGaza health officials says 109 people killed as Israel blames Hamas for breaking truce
Israeli warplanes have attacked targets in Gaza after the end of a seven-day ceasefire, with strikes across much of the region that health officials in the territory said had killed 109 people. Israel attacked targets across Gaza after the end of a seven-day ceasefire on Friday, leaving more than 100 Palestinians dead after negotiations over further hostage releases fell apart overnight.
Loud, continuous explosions were heard coming from Gaza and black smoke billowed from the territory. Israel’s military said it had attacked 200 targets from land, sea and air across the north and south of the strip by lunchtime, including in Khan Younis, a southern city from which it had ordered civilians to evacuate.
Neither Israel nor Hamas had announced an extension to the truce, and both had said repeatedly in the previous 24 hours that their forces were ready to resume fighting. Homes and other buildings were destroyed by the bombing in Gaza while aid to its 2.3 million people was halted, prompting Robert Mardini, the head of the Red Cross, to warn that a “nightmarish situation” for civilians had returned.
Israel’s military announced on Friday morning that it was dividing the entirety of Gaza into dozens of numbered blocks as a prelude, it said, to demanding targeted local evacuations in the crowded south of the strip before planned bombing. It dropped leaflets on to Gaza with a QR code to a website with a map of all the areas and geolocating people within them. Sirens also went off repeatedly in southern Israel, starting before the ceasefire expired at 7am, and continuing throughout the day as Hamas resumed a campaign of rocket attacks. Nobody in Israel was reported killed.
Earlier this week, Israeli military sources said they anticipated the next phase of the operation in Gaza to involve an attack on the south, and in particular Khan Younis, where Israel believes Hamas’s leadership is based, and that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would call for the civilian population to relocate on a district-by-district basis before targeting the area with airstrikes and artillery. Israel said the truce had been broken by Hamas and could not be renewed because the group had failed to offer to release the remaining female hostages in Gaza. Eylon Levy, a government spokesperson, said: “Having chosen to hold on to our women, Hamas will now take the mother of all thumpings.”
Humanitarian groups said on Friday that a plan to divide and attack the south, where 2 million people were sheltering, risked stretching Gaza to breaking point. “There is fundamentally nowhere for people to go,” said Danila Zizi, the Palestine country manager for the charity Humanity and Inclusion. Hamas said some of the women asked for were Israeli soldiers – and that it had offered to hand over two other detainees plus the bodies of three members of the Bibas family it said had been killed by Israeli bombing – but this was rejected. In a statement, Hamas accused Israel of making a “prior decision to resume its criminal aggression against the Gaza Strip”.
Gaza’s ministry of health reported that 109 people had been killed. Dozens more had been wounded, mostly women and children, a spokesperson added. The fighting ended a fragile seven-day truce during which 80 Israeli hostages and 24 foreign nationals were released by Gaza, while Israel released 240 Palestinian prisoners from its jails. Limited humanitarian aid had gone into Gaza, as food, water and medicines remain desperately short.
Israel blamed Hamas for breaking the ceasefire with a barrage of rockets from Gaza aimed at southern Israel shortly before the truce was due to expire at 7am on Friday. Residents of Khan Younis, in the south of the strip, reported that 10 homes were destroyed in a bomb attack on Friday, and film from Al Jazeera showed a devastated area near the city’s refugee camp. Bombing was reported across Gaza, with Israel confirming it had attacked Khan Younis and Rafah farther south.
“Hamas violated the operational pause, and in addition, fired toward Israeli territory,” the Israeli military said in a post on X. “The IDF has resumed combat against the Hamas terrorist organisation in the Gaza Strip.” “I deeply regret that military operations have started again in Gaza,” said António Gutteres, the UN secretary general. “I still hope that it will be possible to renew the pause that was established. The return to hostilities only shows how important it is to have a true humanitarian ceasefire.”
The IDF said it had intercepted the rockets, but sirens warning of further attacks sounded repeatedly in southern Israel in the following hours. Negotiations were continuing to restart the truce with the release of more hostages, said the US and Qatar, who have been acting as brokers. There are 137 people still held hostage, 20 women and 117 men, many of whom are Israeli military personnel. Until now, Israel has offered a day of truce in return for every 10 people returned – and agreed to release 30 Palestinians it holds.
There was no immediate comment from Hamas or claim of responsibility for the launch. Israel’s military said it was dividing the entirety of Gaza into dozens of numbered blocks as a prelude to demanding targeted local evacuations in the crowded south of the strip before attacking a highlighted area. It dropped leaflets on to Gaza with a QR code to a website with a map of all the areas and geolocating people within them.
The renewed offensive appears to be wide-ranging. The Shehab news agency, which is considered close to Hamas, reported that explosions and gunfire could be heard in northern Gaza, where fighting was heaviest before the ceasefire. Other Hamas-affiliated media also reported sounds of military and drone aircraft flying over Gaza City. Earlier this week, Israeli military sources said they anticipated the next phase of the operation in Gaza to involve an attack on the south, and in particular Khan Younis, where Israel believes Hamas’s leadership is based. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would call for the civilian population to relocate on a district-by-district basis before targeting the area with airstrikes and artillery, they added.
Airstrikes were reported in southern Gaza, too, including the Abassan, east of the town of Khan Younis, the interior ministry in the Hamas-run territory said. Another strike hit a home north-west of Gaza City. Humanitarian groups said on Friday that a plan to divide and attack the south, where 2 million people were sheltering, risked stretching Gaza to breaking point. “There is fundamentally nowhere for people to go,” said Danila Zizi, the Palestine country manager for the charity Humanity & Inclusion.
Drones could also be heard in the air over the south for the first time since the truce, an AFP journalist in the area said. There were unconfirmed reports of casualties from strikes in Khan Younis and Rafah. Doctors in Gaza said that though some of the IDF strikes appeared precisely targeted to avoid hospitals or areas with big concentrations of civilians, some were not. Most dangerous was shelling or other retaliation by the IDF following the launch of rockets from Gaza, with many being fired from or near urban areas, the doctors said.
After two last-minute extensions, eight hostages were exchanged for 30 Palestinian prisoners on the seventh day of a Qatari-mediated truce on Thursday, and more humanitarian aid arrived in the shattered Gaza Strip. Civilian casualties began arriving at the European hospital in Khan Younis, one of the few still functioning in Gaza, from mid-morning, with surgeons performing dozens of amputations and other operations throughout the day. Casualties included a two-year-old, whose legs had been smashed by shrapnel, and his older brother. The rest of the family had been killed, one surgeon said.
On Thursday, Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, met Israeli and Palestinian officials and called for the pause in hostilities to be extended. Overnight, six more Israelis, some holding dual nationality, were released, hours after two women were freed. That brought the total of people freed on Thursday to eight, fewer than the 10 hostages a day the truce deal required Hamas to release. A source close to the militant group said it was counting two Russian-Israeli women released on Wednesday as part of the seventh batch.
The truce had paused fighting that began on 7 October when Hamas militants broke through Gaza’s perimeter fence into Israel. About 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the surprise attack, in their homes and at a music festival, and Hamas kidnapped about 240 people, according to Israeli authorities. Fighting began on 7 October when Hamas militants broke through Gaza’s perimeter fence into Israel. About 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the surprise attack, in their homes and at a music festival, and Hamas kidnapped about 240 people, according to Israeli authorities.
Israel vowed to eliminate Hamas in response and began an air and ground military campaign in Gaza that the Hamas government there says has killed more than 15,000 people, mostly civilians.Israel vowed to eliminate Hamas in response and began an air and ground military campaign in Gaza that the Hamas government there says has killed more than 15,000 people, mostly civilians.
During the truce brokered by Qatar, 80 Israeli hostages were freed in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. More than 20 foreigners, most of them Thais living in Israel, were freed outside the scope of the agreement.
Overnight, six more Israelis, some holding dual nationality, were released, hours after two women were freed.
That brought the total of people freed on Thursday to eight, fewer than the 10 hostages a day the truce deal required Hamas to release. A source close to the militant group said it was counting two Russian-Israeli women released on Wednesday as part of the seventh batch.
Not long after the hostages arrived in Israel, the country’s prison service said a further 30 Palestinian prisoners – 23 children and seven women – were freed.
A source close to Hamas said the group backed another extension and mediators were working to prolong the pause, but the negotiations appeared to have failed.
Israel has made it clear it viewed the truce as a temporary pause to secure the release of hostages, and officials in Jerusalem said Hamas was no longer “willing or able” to provide any more women or children hostages as specified by the deal.
Hamas had not “met its obligation to release all of the women hostages today and has launched rockets at Israeli citizens”, Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on Friday morning after hostilities resumed. “The government of Israel is committed to achieving the goals of the war: Releasing the hostages, eliminating Hamas and ensuring that Gaza never again constitutes a threat to the residents of Israel.”
Netanyahu’s government has come under increasing pressure, however, to account for how it will protect civilians in the territory, which is under blockade with no way for people to escape.
Blinken said that any resumed military operation by Israel “must put in place humanitarian civilian protection plans that minimise further casualties of innocent Palestinians”.
Israeli military officials are believed to have suggested a variety of plans, ranging from moving hundreds of thousands of people on to Gaza’s coast or back to the now almost deserted northern part of Gaza. None have been seen as either acceptable or practicable by international interlocutors.
International bodies have called for more time to get medical supplies, food and fuel into Gaza, where an estimated 1.7 million people have been forced from their homes and are living in conditions described as a “humanitarian catastrophe”.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN’s Palestine relief agency UNRWA, told the Guardian on Thursday that a resumed Israeli military assault in the overcrowded south of Gaza may lead many of 1 million refugees, including 900,000 sheltering in UN buildings, to try to push over the border into Egypt. “We already have a staggering human tragedy,” he said.
There are concerns that hostilities will restart on Israel’s northern border, where Hezbollah observed a unilateral ceasefire over the last seven days. The Lebanon-based Islamist militia and political organisation was not party to the negotiations between Hamas and Israel.There are concerns that hostilities will restart on Israel’s northern border, where Hezbollah observed a unilateral ceasefire over the last seven days. The Lebanon-based Islamist militia and political organisation was not party to the negotiations between Hamas and Israel.
The violence in Gaza has also raised tensions in the West Bank, where nearly 240 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers since 7 October, according to the Ramallah-based Palestinian health ministry.