At least 28 Palestinians have been killed in a wave of Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, medical sources tell Al Jazeera, in one of the largest breaches of the United States-brokered ceasefire that came into effect last month.
The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said on Wednesday at least 77 Palestinians were also wounded in Israeli bombardment, according to a preliminary toll.
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Reporting from Gaza City, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said the Israeli attacks targeted three specific sites including southern Gaza’s al-Mawasi area, near Khan Younis.
Israel also struck a junction in the eastern Gaza City area of Shujayea filled with displaced Palestinian families, and a building in the Zeitoun neighbourhood where at least 10 people – including an entire family – were killed.
“A father, a mother, and their three children were killed inside this building,” said Mahmoud, adding that the intensified attacks are fuelling panic throughout the Gaza Strip.
“Already, Palestinians across Gaza are dealing with daily horrors,” he said, noting Israeli bombings have not stopped since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into force on October 10.
“The war is still taking place, and Palestinians are still dying due to the ongoing violence.”
‘Judge, jury and executioner’
The Israeli military said it launched Wednesday’s strikes on “Hamas targets” across Gaza in response to an incident in which its troops came under fire in Khan Younis in the south of the territory.
“The [army] will continue to act forcefully to eliminate any threat to the State of Israel,” it said.
But Hamas rejected the claim that Israel’s forces were fired on, calling it “a flimsy and transparent attempt to justify its crimes and violations” in Gaza.
“We consider this a dangerous escalation through which the war criminal [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu seeks to resume the genocide against our people,” the Palestinian group said in a statement, referring to the latest Israeli attacks.
Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh also noted that Israel has given itself “the right to be judge, jury and executioner” in the implementation of the truce.
“It judges for itself whether there is compliance by Hamas of this ceasefire [in Gaza] … and if it decides that there is no compliance, Israel wages a series of air strikes against specific targets,” Odeh reported from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
Wednesday’s assault on Gaza coincided with a series of Israeli attacks on Lebanon, where tensions are rapidly escalating after an Israeli bombing of a Palestinian refugee camp in the south of the country killed more than a dozen people on Tuesday.
It also came just days after the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) passed a resolution backing US President Donald Trump’s peace plan for Gaza, including the deployment of a so-called “international stabilisation force”.
The resolution also greenlit the establishment of a “board of peace” to oversee governance in the coastal territory, as the US and Israel demand that Hamas relinquish control of Gaza.
Hamas and other Palestinian factions in Gaza have rejected the plan, saying it lays down a framework that goes against “the national will”.
Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq called on UNSC members to vote against the resolution, warning it could lead to the “undermining and rejection of Palestinian self-determination”.
Hundreds of violations
Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a US-based think tank, said Israel’s attacks on Gaza challenge “both the international community and the limits” of the UNSC resolution.
“This is a real test for the [UN] Security Council, for the United States, and for the international community,” Elgindy told Al Jazeera. “Are they going to uphold this ceasefire that they’ve been celebrating now for many weeks?”
Supporters of the US-backed UN resolution argued it would help bring a lasting halt to Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed nearly 70,000 Palestinians since October 2023.
“But we don’t even have that. We don’t have full compliance or even partial compliance by Israel with the terms of the ceasefire,” Elgindy said.
“If the United States is not going to act, then essentially what we’re going to have is a continuation of the war under the pretext of a ceasefire and peacemaking, when in fact the opposite is the case.”
Israel has violated the ceasefire agreement at least 393 times since October 10, an Al Jazeera analysis found.
