Israel launched new deadly bombardments against the Gaza Strip on Saturday, the second day of attacks following the end of a week-long truce with Hamas and despite international pressure to extend the agreement.
Following the shelling, smoke billowed from Gaza, where the Health Ministry run by the Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement said 240 people were killed and 650 wounded since the truce expired on Friday.
The two sides blamed each other for the truce’s expiration on Friday, and Israel accused Hamas, an organization considered a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel, of trying to attack it with rockets at the height of the truce and failing to submit a list of hostages to be released.
“We are now attacking Hamas military targets throughout the Gaza Strip,” Israel Defense Forces spokesman Jonathan Conricus said Saturday, saying the army struck more than 400 “terrorist targets” in the Palestinian territory since the end of the agreement.
The armed wing of Hamas received “the order to resume fighting” and to “defend the Gaza Strip,” said a source close to the group who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to journalists.
International authorities and humanitarian groups condemned the return to fighting.
“I deeply regret that military operations resumed in Gaza,” said UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on X, before Twitter.
– Regional conflagration –
Fears of a larger regional conflict grew after the Syrian Defense Ministry reported Israeli shelling near Damascus.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), an NGO with a large network of sources in Syria, claimed that two fighters linked to the Lebanese Hezbollah movement were killed in these attacks. The Israeli military did not comment.
Earlier, Hamas ally Hezbollah reported the death of two of its members in Israeli shelling in southern Lebanon, where a civilian was also killed.
The conflict between Hamas and Israel erupted on October 7 when the Palestinian movement carried out an unprecedented attack on Israeli soil, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping some 240, according to officials.
In response, Israel launched a military campaign, air and ground, that has left more than 15,000 people dead in the Gaza Strip, mostly civilians, according to officials of Hamas, which has ruled the Palestinian territory since 2007.
– “The mother of all beatings” –
Since the start of the war, 110 hostages have been released, 105 thanks to the truce agreement between the two sides. However, the Israeli army claimed Saturday that five of those taken by Hamas were killed and that the group is holding “136 hostages, including 17 women and children.”
The truce saw scenes of joy as freed hostages were reunited with their families, and jubilation in the occupied West Bank as Palestinian prisoners were released from Israeli jails.
U.S. chief diplomat Antony Blinken told reporters in Dubai that his country remains “intensely focused” on freeing hostages and resuming “the process that worked for seven days” under the truce.
“We’re going to continue to work with Israel, Egypt and Qatar to reimplement the pause,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Friday.
But Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy noted that “for choosing to keep our women, Hamas will take the mother of all beatings.”
Hamas claims it proposed handing over the bodies of a woman and her two children, one of them a baby, in talks to extend the truce, but Israeli officials refused to comment on what they described as “propaganda” by the Islamists.
– “Horror movie” –
Guterres warned of a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza where, according to the UN, 1.7 million people have been displaced and lack food, water and other goods because of Israel’s siege of the narrow territory.
The Palestinian Red Crescent announced on Friday night that Israel “informed all the NGOs and agencies” that sent aid to the Rafah border crossing with Egypt that “the entry of aid trucks was suspended until further notice”.
Officials at the Rafah post confirmed that aid is still accumulating but that no trucks have entered since the truce ended.
“The health service is on its knees,” Rob Holden of the World Health Organization (WHO) told reporters in Gaza. “It’s like a horror movie,” he added.
In a bed at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Amal Abu Dagga wept, her veil covered in blood.
“I don’t even know what happened to my children,” he declared.
On Friday, the Israeli army published a map of “evacuation zones” in the Gaza Strip for residents to be “evacuated from specific sites if needed for their safety.”
It also sent SMS to residents in several areas of Gaza warning them that it was going to begin “a crushing military attack on their area of residence with a view to eliminating the Hamas terrorist organization.”