GAZA: Israel bombed Gaza for a second day on Saturday, killing people, after a week-long ceasefire with Hamas ended, even though people around the world asked for more time.
Strikes sent clouds of gray smoke over Gaza, where the health ministry said that since the cease-fire ended early Friday, nearly 200 people had been killed.
The truce was broken by both sides. Israel said that Hamas tried to fire a rocket before it ended and that it failed to show a list of more prisoners that needed to be freed.
A spokeswoman for the Israel Defense Forces told reporters on Saturday, “Right now we’re hitting Hamas military targets all over the Gaza Strip.”
A person close to the group who asked not to be named because they weren’t authorized to talk to the media said that Hamas’s armed wing was given “the order to resume combat” and to “defend the Gaza Strip” when fighting started up again.
Leaders from around the world and humanitarian groups spoke out against the return to war.
On X, which used to be Twitter, UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres said, “I deeply regret that military operations have started again in Gaza.”
Martin Griffiths, the head of the UN’s humanitarian office, said, “Today, in just a few hours, scores of people were killed and injured.”
“Again, families were told to leave. Sadly, hopes were dashed.
The Syrian Defense Ministry said that Israeli strikes had hit Damascus on Saturday, and Hezbollah said that one of its members had been killed in an Israeli strike on Lebanon on Friday. This made people more worried about a bigger war in the region.
The US said it is working with other countries in the region to find a new way to stop the fighting.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters in California on Friday, “We’re going to keep working with Israel, Egypt, and Qatar to try to bring back the pause.”
The talks between Qatar and Egypt are still going on, according to a person who was told on them but asked not to be named.
After the October 7 raid, Israel promised to get rid of Hamas. They then started an air and ground operation that killed over 15,000 Palestinians, including about 40% of children.
But in a diplomatic victory, both sides agreed to a seven-day ceasefire. During that time, Hamas freed 80 Israeli prisoners in return for 240 Palestinian prisoners, and more aid got into Gaza.
During the week of prisoner exchanges, Israeli families cried as they saw their freed relatives again, and there was joy in the streets of the occupied West Bank as Palestinian criminals were let out of Israeli jails.
Twenty-five more prisoners, mostly Thais, were freed in different ways.
There was an Israeli airstrike on the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip, and a building was destroyed. A Palestinian woman responds as people look at the rubble. Picture: AFP
There was an Israeli airstrike on the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip, and a building was destroyed. A Palestinian woman responds as people look at the rubble. Picture: AFP
The Israeli army said on Friday that five more prisoners had died, bringing the total number of prisoners killed to seven. They also said that 136 people were still being held, including 17 women and children.
Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, told reporters in Dubai on Friday that the US was still “intensely focused on getting everyone home, getting hostages back” and “pursuing the process that had worked for seven days” during the cease-fire.
Reporters were told by Eylon Levy, a spokesman for the Israeli government, that because Hamas decided to keep our women, they would now get the worst beating possible.
It was said by the Israeli military that “ground, air, and naval forces struck terror targets in the north and south of the Gaza Strip, including in Khan Yunis and Rafah.”
According to Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency, Israeli troops were active early Saturday morning in several areas of the occupied West Bank.
An AFPTV video showed a guy in a blue sweater crying out loud as he looked at a dead boy in a body bag outside of Gaza City’s Al-Ahli hospital. He then turned his face and hands to the sky.
“What was wrong with him?” He yelled, “God, what did we do to deserve this?”
The UN says that 1.7 million people in Gaza have been forced to leave their homes and are short on food, water, and other necessities. Guterres has warned of a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza.
“The healthcare service is on its knees,” Rob Holden, a senior emergency officer for the World Health Organization (WHO), told reporters from Gaza, where blasts could be heard.
“It is like a horror movie.”
Amal Abu Dagga cried on a bed at Khan Yunis’s Nasser hospital. Her beige veil was stained with blood.
“I don’t even know what happened to my children,” she stated. Jamil Abu Dagga, a family member, told AFP that the family was home when the bombs went off.
In Israel, several towns near Gaza had alarms go off to warn people of possible missiles. The government said they were stepping up security in the area again, which included closing schools.
A rocket hit a neighborhood in Israel close to Gaza and destroyed a van.
Catherine Russell, the head of UNICEF, said in a statement on Saturday, “Today, the Gaza Strip is once again the most dangerous place in the world to be a child.”
The Israeli military put out a map of the Gaza Strip with “evacuation zones” that it said would allow people to “escape from certain places for their safety if required.” A lot of Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli forces while they were following orders to “evacuate.”
On Friday, people in different parts of Gaza were sent SMS alerts.
The threats said that Israeli forces “will launch a devastating military attack on your area of residence with the goal of destroying the terrorist group Hamas.”
“Stay away from all military activity of every kind.”
