Daijiworld Media Network - Gaza City
Gaza City, Oct 29: Tensions escalated in Gaza on Tuesday after Israel carried out a series of air strikes that killed at least 30 people, despite an ongoing ceasefire brokered by the United States earlier this month. The strikes came after the Israeli military accused Hamas of violating the truce by attacking its troops inside Gaza.
Gaza’s civil defence agency, which operates under Hamas, said the attacks targeted multiple areas, including one strike that hit the backyard of Gaza’s main Al-Shifa Hospital. Five people were reportedly killed when their vehicle was hit.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered “powerful strikes” in response to what Defence Minister Israel Katz described as “a crossing of a bright red line.”
“Hamas’s attack today on IDF soldiers in Gaza is a serious violation to which the IDF will respond with great force,” Katz said in a statement.
Hamas, however, denied any involvement in the alleged attack on Israeli forces, saying its fighters had “no connection to the shooting incident in Rafah.”
Despite the renewed violence, US Vice President JD Vance insisted that the ceasefire remained in place. Speaking on Fox News, Vance said, “That doesn’t mean there aren’t going to be little skirmishes. We know that Hamas or somebody else within Gaza attacked an IDF soldier. We expect the Israelis to respond — but I think the president’s peace is going to hold.”
The fragile truce — in effect since October 10 — was part of a deal requiring Hamas to return the remains of 28 deceased hostages. However, disputes over the handover of the last bodies have threatened to derail the agreement.
On Monday, Hamas returned what it said were the remains of one hostage, but Israeli authorities said forensic testing showed they were partial remains of a person whose body had already been recovered two years ago. Israeli spokeswoman Shosh Bedrosian accused Hamas of staging the recovery, claiming the group “dug a hole, placed the remains inside, and handed it to the Red Cross.”
In response, Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said Israeli bombardments had devastated Gaza’s landscape, making it difficult to locate bodies. “The movement is determined to hand over the bodies of the Israeli captives as soon as possible once they are located,” he told AFP.
Hamas said it has already returned all 20 living hostages as required under the ceasefire, and on Tuesday announced it had found the bodies of two more captives but did not specify when they would be handed over.
The ongoing hostilities have renewed fears of a total collapse of the truce.
“We want to rest. I believe the war will come back,” said Abdul-Hayy al-Hajj Ahmed, a 60-year-old resident of Gaza City. “Now they accuse Hamas of stalling, and that is a pretext for renewed escalation and war.”
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel killed 1,221 people, mostly civilians, while Israel’s retaliatory campaign has left more than 68,500 people dead in Gaza, according to figures from the Hamas-run health ministry, which the UN considers reliable. Despite the ceasefire, the toll continues to rise as more bodies are recovered from the rubble.