Israeli airstrikes overnight and into Thursday struck several homes and killed at least 91 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Hours later, Hamas fired three rockets at Israel without causing casualties, in the first such attack since Israel ended their ceasefire with a surprise bombardment of Gaza on Tuesday.
The Israeli military meanwhile restored a blockade on northern Gaza, including Gaza City, that it had maintained for most of the war. It warned residents against using the main highway to enter or leave the north and said only passage to the south would be allowed on the coastal road.
It also announced an additional ground operation in northern Gaza near the already largely destroyed town of Beit Lahiya, where strikes have killed dozens over the past 24 hours.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians returned to what remains of their homes in the north after a ceasefire took hold in January.
Israel resumed heavy strikes across Gaza on Tuesday, shattering the truce that had facilitated the release of more than two dozen hostages. Israel blamed the renewed fighting on Hamas because the militant group rejected a new proposal that departed from their signed agreement.
The Trump administration, which took credit for helping to broker the ceasefire, has voiced full support for Israel.
More than 400 Palestinians were killed on Tuesday alone, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
The military said three rockets were fired out of Gaza on Thursday, with one intercepted and two falling in open areas. Hamas claimed the attack and said it had targeted Tel Aviv.
Earlier, the military said it intercepted a missile launched by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels overnight before it reached Israeli airspace, as air raid sirens and exploding interceptors were heard in Jerusalem.
The United States and Yemen’s Houthi rebels are both vowing escalation after the U.S. launched airstrikes that killed at least 53 people, including five women and two children, according to Yemen’s Health Ministry. The U.S. says the airstrikes on Sanaa and Saada were to deter the rebels from attacking military and commercial vessels in one of the world’s busiest shipping corridors on the Red Sea.
No injuries were reported. It was the second such attack since the U.S. began a new campaign of airstrikes against the rebels earlier this week.
Meanwhile in Israel, hundreds of people demonstrated outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem to protest his handling of the hostage crisis and his plan to fire the country’s head of internal security.
‘Another tough night’
One of the Israeli airstrikes on Gaza early Thursday hit the Abu Daqa family’s home in Abasan al-Kabira, a village just outside of Khan Younis near the border with Israel. It was inside an area the Israeli military ordered evacuated earlier this week, encompassing most of eastern Gaza.
The strike killed at least 16 people, mostly women and children, according to the nearby European Hospital, which received the dead. Those killed included a father and his seven children, as well as the parents and brother of a month-old baby who survived, along with her grandparents.
“Another tough night,” said Hani Awad, who was helping rescuers search for more survivors in the rubble. “The house collapsed over the people’s heads.”
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the latest strikes.
The military says it only targets militants and blames civilian deaths on Hamas because it is deeply embedded in residential areas.
Attacks intensify, with no sign of new talks
On Wednesday, Israeli ground troops advanced in Gaza for the first time since a ceasefire took hold in January, seizing part of a corridor separating the northern third of the territory from the south.
Protesters marched in Jerusalem on Wednesday to express concern for hostages still held in Gaza and dismay with Israel’s leadership, with one woman saying: ‘We want them home now, and we want democracy to be healed.’
Israel, which has also cut off the supply of food, fuel and humanitarian aid to Gaza’s roughly two million Palestinians, has vowed to intensify its operations until Hamas releases the 59 hostages it holds — 35 of whom are believed dead — and gives up control of the territory.
Hamas has said it will only release the remaining hostages in exchange for a lasting ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, as called for in the ceasefire agreement they reached in January after more than a year of mediation by the United States, Egypt and Qatar.
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, and Israeli hostages held in Gaza would be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners.
Israel has offered only a temporary extension of the truce, cut off all supplies to Gaza and says it is restarting its military campaign to force Hamas to free remaining hostages.
Musab Quraiqa says he wrote out a list of 26 names lost, but fears at least 40 members of his family were killed overnight.
The resumption of airstrikes has sent Palestinian residents again fleeing for their lives from homes they had begun to reinhabit among the ruins of the devastated enclave.
The war started after Hamas militants attacked Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people including several Canadian citizens while taking more than 250 hostages, by Israeli government tallies.
More than 49,000 Palestinians have been killed in the ensuing conflict, according to Gaza’s health authorities, with the enclave reduced to rubble.
