At least 104 Palestinians were killed in a wave of Israeli strikes in Gaza on Tuesday night, the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry says.

The Israeli military said it struck “dozens of terror targets and terrorists” in response to violations by Hamas of the US-brokered ceasefire deal.

Israel’s defence minister accused Hamas of an attack in Gaza that killed an Israeli soldier, and of breaching the terms on returning deceased hostages’ bodies. Hamas said it had “no connection” to the attack and was committed to the deal.

US President Donald Trump maintained “nothing” would jeopardise the ceasefire, but added that Israel should “hit back” when its soldiers were targeted.

The Israeli strikes hit homes, schools and residential blocks in Gaza City and Beit Lahia in the north of Gaza, Bureij and Nuseirat in the centre, and Khan Younis in the south.

Witnesses in Gaza City described seeing “pillars of fire and smoke” rising into the air as explosions shook several residential areas.

Gaza’s health ministry said a total of 104 people were killed, including 46 children and 20 women, and that more than 250 others were injured.

Three women and a man who were pulled from the rubble of the al-Banna family’s home in the southern Sabra neighbourhood of Gaza City, according to the Hamas-run Civil Defence agency.

In the urban Bureij refugee camp, five members of the Abu Sharar family were killed in a strike on their home in the Block 7 area, it said.

Another five people were killed when aircraft targeted a vehicle on a road north-west of Khan Younis, the agency added.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Wednesday morning that it had “begun the renewed enforcement of the ceasefire” after carrying out a series of strikes on what it described as “dozens of terror targets and terrorists”, including at least 30 commanders of armed groups.

“The IDF will continue to uphold the ceasefire agreement and will respond firmly to any violation of it,” it added.

A brief statement put out by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Tuesday evening said he had ordered the IDF to carry out “forceful strikes” on Gaza but did not specify his reasons.

However, his defence minister said Hamas had crossed “a bright red line” by launching an attack on Israeli soldiers in Gaza on Tuesday.

“Hamas will pay many times over for attacking the soldiers and for violating the agreement to return the fallen hostages,” Israel Katz warned.

On Wednesday morning, the IDF announced that a reservist soldier, Master Sergeant Yona Efraim Feldbaum, was killed.

A military source said the attack took place in the southern city of Rafah on the Israeli side of the so-called “Yellow Line”, which demarcates IDF-controlled territory inside Gaza under the ceasefire deal.

Sgt Feldbaum was killed when one of the vehicles of an IDF engineering team that was dismantling an underground tunnel route in Rafah was hit by fire from “terrorists in the area”, according to the source.

“A few minutes later, several anti-tank missiles were fired at another armoured vehicle belonging to the troops in the area. No injuries were reported,” they added.

Hamas issued a statement denying that its fighters had attacked Israeli troops and condemning the Israeli strikes.

“Hamas affirms that it has no connection to the shooting incident in Rafah and affirms its commitment to the ceasefire agreement,” it said.

“The criminal bombardment carried out by the fascist occupation [Israeli] army on areas of the Gaza Strip represents a blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement.”

The group’s military wing meanwhile said it would postpone the return of a hostage’s body it had recovered on Tuesday due to what it called Israeli “violations”.

The US played down concerns that all-out hostilities could resume.

On board Air Force One, President Trump told reporters: “As I understand it, they took out, they killed an Israeli soldier. So the Israelis hit back and they should hit back.”

“Nothing is going to jeopardise” the ceasefire, he said. “You have to understand Hamas is a very small part of peace in the Middle East, and they have to behave.”

On Tuesday afternoon, Israel’s prime minister had pledged to take unspecified “steps” against Hamas after the group handed over the previous day a coffin containing human remains that did not belong to one of the 13 deceased hostages still in Gaza.

Netanyahu’s office said forensic tests showed they belonged to Ofir Tzarfati, an Israeli hostage whose body was recovered by Israeli forces in Gaza in late 2023, and that this constituted a “clear violation” of the ceasefire deal.

The IDF also released footage from a drone that it said showed Hamas operatives “removing body remains from a structure that had been prepared in advance and burying them nearby” in eastern Gaza City on Monday.

“Shortly afterwards,” it added, the operatives “summoned representatives of the Red Cross and staged a false display of discovering a deceased hostage’s body.”

Hamas rejected what it called the “baseless allegations” and accused Israel of “seeking to fabricate false pretexts in preparation for taking new aggressive steps”.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) later condemned what it called the “fake recovery”, saying it had attended the scene “at the request of Hamas” and “in good faith”.

It went on: “The ICRC team at this location were not aware that a deceased person had been placed there prior to their arrival, as seen in the footage – in general, our role as neutral intermediary does not include unearthing of the bodies of the deceased.

“Our team only observed what appeared to be the recovery of remains without prior knowledge of the circumstances leading up to it.

“It is unacceptable that a fake recovery was staged, when so much depends on this agreement being upheld and when so many families are still anxiously awaiting news of their loved ones.”

The ceasefire agreement brokered by the US, Egypt, Qatar and Turkey is supposed to implement the first stage of Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan.

It said Hamas would return its 48 living and deceased hostages within 72 hours of the ceasefire taking effect on 10 October.

All 20 living Israeli hostages were released on 13 October in exchange for 250 Palestinian prisoners and 1,718 detainees from Gaza.

Israel has also handed over the bodies of 195 Palestinians in exchange for the bodies of the 13 Israeli hostages so far returned by Hamas, along with those of two foreign hostages - one of them Thai and the other Nepalese.

Eleven of the dead hostages still in Gaza are Israelis, one is Tanzanian, and one is Thai.

On Saturday, Hamas’s chief negotiator Khalil al-Hayya said the group was facing challenges because Israeli forces had “altered the terrain of Gaza”. He also said that “some of those who buried the bodies have been martyred or no longer remember where they buried them”.

However, the Israeli government insists Hamas knows the locations of all the bodies.

Although the ceasefire deal appeared to acknowledge that Hamas might not be able to return all the deceased hostages within the original timeframe, Trump warned the group on Saturday that it had to hand over those remaining “quickly, or the other countries involved in this great peace will take action”.

All but one of the dead hostages still in Gaza were among the 251 people abducted during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, during which about 1,200 other people were killed.

Israel responded by launching a military campaign in Gaza, during which more than 68,600 people have been killed, including more than 200 since the ceasefire took effect, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Source: BBC

- Agencies