By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Mahmoud Issa
CAIRO/GAZA (Reuters) – At least 91 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded in airstrikes across Gaza on Thursday after Israel resumed bombing and ground operations, the enclave’s health ministry said, effectively ditching a two-month-old ceasefire.
After two months of relative calm, Gazans were again fleeing for their lives after Israel effectively abandoned a ceasefire, launching a new all-out air and ground campaign against Gaza’s dominant Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Israeli aircraft dropped leaflets on residential neighbourhoods, ordering people out of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun towns in the north, the Shejaia district in Gaza City and towns on the eastern outskirts of Khan Younis in the south.
“War is back, displacement and death are back, will we survive this round?” said Samed Sami, 29, who fled Shejaia to put up a tent for his family in a camp on open ground.
A day after sending tanks into central Gaza, the Israeli military said on Thursday it had also begun conducting ground operations in the north of the densely populated enclave, along the coastal route in Beit Lahiya.
Hamas, which had not retaliated during the first 48 hours of the renewed Israeli assault, said its fighters fired rockets into Israel. The Israeli military said sirens sounded in the centre of the country after projectiles were launched from Gaza.
Palestinian medics said Israeli strikes targeted several houses in northern and southern sections of the Gaza Strip.
With talks having failed to bridge differences over terms to extend the ceasefire, the military resumed its air assaults on Gaza with a massive bombing campaign on Tuesday before sending soldiers in the day after.
HUNDREDS DEAD
It said on Thursday that its forces had been engaged for the past 24 hours in what it described as an operation to expand a buffer zone separating the northern and southern halves of Gaza, known as the Netzarim corridor.
Israel ordered residents to stay away from the Salahuddin road, Gaza’s main north-south route, and said they should travel along the coast instead.
Tuesday’s first day of resumed airstrikes killed more than 400 Palestinians, one of the deadliest days of the 17-month-old conflict, with scant let-up since.
In a blow to Hamas as it sought to rebuild its administration in Gaza, this week’s strikes have killed some of its top figures, including the de facto Hamas-appointed head of the Gaza government, the chief of security services, his aide, and the deputy head of the Hamas-run justice ministry.
The Islamist group said the Israeli ground operation and the incursion into the Netzarim corridor were a “new and dangerous violation” of the ceasefire agreement. In a statement, it reaffirmed its commitment to the deal and called on mediators to “assume their responsibilities”.
For Israel, a return to full-blown war could prove complicated, some current and former Israeli officials say, amid waning public support and burnout among military reservists. Protesters accuse Netanyahu of continuing the war for political reasons and endangering the lives of remaining hostages.
A temporary first phase of the ceasefire ended at the start of this month. Hamas wants to move to an agreed second phase, under which Israel would be required to negotiate an end to the war and withdrawal of its troops from Gaza, and Israeli hostages still held there would be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners.
Israel has offered only a temporary extension of the truce, cut off all supplies to Gaza and said it was restarting its military campaign to force Hamas to free remaining hostages.
‘WE DON’T WANT DEATH’
The ceasefire had allowed Huda Junaid, her husband and family to return to the site of their destroyed home to camp out in the ruins. But they were now forced to flee again, packing their few remaining belongings into a donkey cart and searching for a new place to pitch their tent near a school.
“We don’t want war, we don’t want death. Enough, we are fed up. There are no longer children in Gaza, all of our children are dead, all of our relatives are dead,” she said.
Some Palestinians who tried to use the Salahuddin road said they saw cars come under fire from Israeli troops advancing towards Netzarim. The fate of those in the vehicles was unknown.
“Bulldozers protected by some tanks were heading to the west coming from the areas where they are stationed near the fence east of the Salahuddin road,” one taxi driver told Reuters, asking not to be identified for fear of reprisals.
Speaking to Reuters on Thursday, a Hamas official said mediators had stepped up efforts with the two warring sides but no breakthrough had yet come.
Some residents said there were no signs yet of preparations by Hamas on the ground to resume fighting. But an official from one militant group allied to Hamas, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters on Thursday that fighters, including from Hamas, had been put on alert awaiting further instructions. Fighters had also been told to stop using mobile phones.
The war erupted after Hamas militants attacked Israeli communities near the Gaza border in October 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, by Israeli tallies.
More than 49,000 Palestinians have been killed in the ensuing conflict, according to Gaza’s health authorities, with much of the enclave reduced to rubble.
(Reporting by Nidal al Mughrabi in Cairo and Mahmoud Issa in Gaza; writing by Nidal al Mughrabi, Michael Georgy and Peter Graff; editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Mark Heinrich)
