War between Israel and Hamas resumes after temporary cease-fire ends
The temporary cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hamas ended Friday morning after a week, as both parties confirmed that hostilities had resumed after Israel accused the militant group of violating the truce.
Israeli war planes hit targets in the Gaza Strip, killing at least 60 people, according to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in the Palestinian territory, as rocket warning sirens blared in southern Israel. About an hour before the cease-fire was set to expire at 7 a.m. local time (midnight Eastern), the Israeli military said the country’s missile defense system had detected and intercepted a rocket fired toward Israeli territory from Gaza. Air raid sirens were heard in southern Israel Friday morning and schools in central Israel were told to open only if they have bomb shelters. Otherwise, classes were to be held remotely.
“Hamas violated the operational pause and in addition, fired toward Israeli territory,” the IDF said in a social media post. “The IDF has resumed combat against the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip.”
The government of Qatar, where negotiations have been taking place for weeks and where the terms of the cease-fire were agreed, expressed “deep regret” at the resumption of hostilities. It said “negotiations between the two sides are continuing with the aim of returning to a pause.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on his third visit to Israel since the war began, met Thursday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and cautioned Israel to protect civilians in Gaza.
Hamas said negotiations had taken place throughout the night in an effort to agree a third extension of the pause in fighting, and that it had made offers including returning the bodies of a mother and her two young children who had been among the hostages seized by the group during its unprecedented Oct. 7 terror attack.
After a strike in the southern Gaza city of Rafah on Friday, a Palestinian teenager was found crying and saying, “We were there collecting water to wash our clothes. The bombing started and the rocks came flying at us.” The resumption of hostilities have brought the roughly 2.3 million people of Gaza back to the nightmarish situation they were in before the truce took place.
The Reuters news agency cited officials in Egypt as saying the end of the truce meant truck convoys, which had delivered desperately needed humanitarian essentials to Gaza through the Rafah border crossing every day during the pause in fighting, could no longer enter the territory.
The fragile deal was strained this week by several incidents of violence, including a shooting early Thursday morning in which two gunmen opened fire on a crowded bus stop in Jerusalem, killing at least three Israelis and wounding six others.
The cease-fire began on Nov. 24 and was renewed twice. On Thursday, the seventh and last day of the pause in fighting, eight Israeli hostages were freed from Gaza and 30 Palestinians were released from Israeli prisons.
More than 1,200 people, most of them civilians, were killed by Hamas militants during their Oct. 7 rampage across southern Israel, according to the Israeli military. The group has long been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., Israel and many other nations.