Israeli military launches 'extensive' strikes in Gaza, jeopardizing ceasefire deal
Israeli airstrikes in Gaza have killed more than 400 people, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said Tuesday, in what appeared to be the most intense assault on the enclave since a ceasefire took effect in January.
Israel's military described the strikes as "extensive." They were reported in multiple locations in the Palestinian enclave, including northern, central and southern Gaza. Palestinian health ministry officials said many of the dead were children. The Gaza health ministry figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
The strikes came amid stalled negotiations between the two sides to extend a truce that was already due to reach a decisive second stage for hostage releases and ending the war. In recent weeks, Israel has pushed − with U.S. support − Hamas to release significant numbers of hostages. Hamas has been unwilling to do that without assurances it would be allowed to stay in power in Gaza after the war ends.
Israel's military, which said it hit dozens of targets, said the strikes would continue for as long as necessary and may extend beyond airstrikes, raising the prospect that Israeli ground troops could resume fighting. It said it was targeting midlevel Hamas commanders and leadership as well as Hamas infrastructure.
It was not immediately clear what the resumption of Israeli strikes could mean for the truce over the longer term.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said the military action was aimed at helping Israel achieve its war aims, including the return of all Israel's hostages. It accused Hamas of "repeated refusal to release our hostages" and rejecting proposals from President Donald Trump's chief Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff.
"Israel will, from now on, act against Hamas with increasing military strength," it said in a statement.
Hamas said Israel had overturned the ceasefire agreement, leaving the fate of 59 hostages still held in Gaza uncertain. Up to 24 of those hostages, including one American, are still believed to be alive.
In Washington, a White House spokesperson said late Monday that Israel had consulted with the U.S. administration before it carried out the strikes. "Hamas could have released hostages to extend the ceasefire but instead chose refusal and war," White House spokesperson Brian Hughes said.
Nimrod Novik, a foreign policy fellow at the Israel Policy Forum think tank, said the claim from Netanyahu's office that Israel was seeking to pressure Hamas to return to the negotiating table "flies in the face of the fact that it was Netanyahu" who violated the deal brokered by the U.S. by launching the airstrikes.
"All hostages release were accomplished by diplomacy. Not by military pressure," he said.
In Gaza, witnesses contacted by the Reuters news agency said Israeli tanks shelled areas in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, forcing many families who had returned after the ceasefire to leave their homes and head northward to Khan Younis. In hospitals strained by 15 months of bombardment, Reuters reported, piles of bodies in white plastic sheets smeared with blood could be seen stacked up as casualties were brought in.
Mustafa Barghouti, a onetime Palestinian presidential candidate and the current leader of the Palestinian National Initiative political group, described Israel's air strikes as a "massacre."
Hamas said the U.S. "bears full responsibility" for the death toll because Israel briefed the administration on the strikes ahead of time. Hamas said the attack exposed the "falsity" of U.S. claims about "caring for de-escalation."
A group representing Israeli hostage families said in a statement that the "greatest fear of the families, the kidnapped, and the citizens of Israel has come true. The Israeli government chose to give up the hostages."
The statement accused Israel's leaders of "dismantling" the "process to return our loved ones." The families called on Trump, who has said he will end the war, to "continue to act as he has declared and acted so far."
Who is the American still being held in Gaza?
Edan Alexander, 21, is believed to be the last living U.S. citizen held hostage in Gaza.
The militant group is also thought to holding the bodies of four Israeli-Americans: Itay Chen, 19; Omer Neutra, 21; Judith Weinstein, 70; and her husband, Gadi Haggai, 72.
Alexander grew up in Bergen County, New Jersey. He took a year off after graduating high school to go to Israel, where he volunteered to serve in the Israel Defense Forces. He was patrolling the Gaza border on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas stormed across the border in an attack that killed 1,200 people and captured 251 hostages.
"We've been hopeful all the time. For the first time, it feels like we are finally there," his father, Adi Alexander, told Paste BN shortly before Israel entered into a truce with Hamas in January.
"I just want to hug him and I hope he will say: 'You know what? It wasn't so bad guys. I'm good.'"