Israel on Tuesday unleashed its most intense strikes on the Gaza Strip since a January ceasefire, with rescuers reporting more than 400 people killed, and Hamas accusing Benjamin Netanyahu of deciding to “resume war” after a deadlock on extending the truce.
The White House confirmed that Israel consulted US President Donald Trump’s administration before launching the wave of strikes, which rescuers said killed mostly women, children and elderly.
Netanyahu’s office said the operation was ordered after “Hamas’s repeated refusal to release our hostages, as well as its rejection of all of the proposals it has received from US Presidential Envoy Steve Witkoff and from the mediators. “Israel will, from now on, act against Hamas with increasing military strength,” said the statement.
An Israeli official told AFP the military operation would “continue as long as necessary” and was expected to “expand beyond air strikes”.
In a statement, Hamas said: “Netanyahu and his extremist government have decided to overturn the ceasefire agreement.”
“Netanyahu’s decision to resume war is a decision to sacrifice the occupation’s prisoners and impose a death sentence on them,” it said, accusing the Israeli prime minister of using the conflict as a political “lifeboat” to stay afloat amid domestic crises.
Mohammed Jarghoun, 36, was sleeping in a tent near his destroyed house in Khan Yunis when he was woken by huge blasts. “I thought they were dreams and nightmares, but I saw a fire in my relatives’ house. More than twenty martyrs and wounded, most of them children and women.”
Ramez Alammarin, 25, described carrying children to hospital southeast of Gaza City.
“They unleashed the fire of hell again on Gaza,” he said of Israel, adding that “bodies and limbs are on the ground, and the wounded cannot find any doctor to treat them.
“They bombed a building in the area and there are still martyrs and wounded under the rubble… fear and terror. Death is better than life.”
