Israel stepped up its bombardment of Gaza overnight and into Sunday, killing at least 40 people, Palestinians said, after Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu argued that the only way to secure the release of hostages was intense military pressure on Hamas.
The Israeli attacks took place amid fierce fighting the length of the coastal enclave, according to residents and militants, with communications down for a fourth day, making it hard to reach the wounded.
“The communication blackout in Gaza is the longest since the start of the Israeli escalation,” the Palestinian Red Crescent said on X, adding that its teams were also hampered by shelling.
Israel’s spy chief held talks on Friday with the prime minister of Qatar, which mediated earlier hostage releases in return for a week-long ceasefire and the freeing of Palestinian prisoners, a source with knowledge of the matter said.
But the militants have said they will not discuss freeing any more of those captured when they attacked southern Israel on October 7th while Israel continues the all-out war on Gaza it unleashed in response.
With no signs of compromise, the violence intensified. Israeli missile strikes against a house belonging to the Shehab family killed 24 people and wounded dozens of others in Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, Hamas Aqsa radio said, quoting the director of the health ministry.
Health officials were not available for immediate comment but a medic said dozens people had been killed or wounded in the Shebab family home and others nearby that were also hit.
“Jabalia suffered tank, air, and naval bombardment overnight, it has been suffering a brutal war for days, people are dying in the streets and we can’t get to them,” he said by telephone, using an e-sim that can connect to outside networks and declining to give a name fearing Israeli reprisal.
“We believe the number of dead people under the rubble is huge but there is no way to remove the rubble and recover them because of the intensity of Israeli fire.”
In Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, medics said 12 Palestinians had been killed and dozens were wounded, while in Rafah in the south, they said an Israeli air strike left at least four people dead.
Israel said it had operated against “terrorist” targets.
Around 19,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza health officials, and thousands buried in the rubble of Israeli air strikes since October 7th, when Israel says Hamas militants killed 1,200 people and captured 240 hostages in their surprise raid.
Israel’s military said on Sunday that 121 soldiers had been killed since the ground campaign began on October 27th, when tanks and infantry began to push into Gaza’s cities and refugee camps.
Mr Netanyahu read out a letter at his weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday which he said was written by relatives of dead soldiers.
“You have a mandate to fight. You do not have a mandate to stop in the middle,” he quoted them as saying, responding: “We will fight to the end.”
The toll is already almost twice as high as during a ground offensive in 2014, a reflection of how far it has pushed into the enclave and of Hamas’ effective use of guerrilla tactics and an expanded arsenal.
The Israeli military said its ground troops had found weapons and a tunnel used by militants to attack troops in Shejaia, a suburb east of Gaza City in the north, and destroyed a weapons storage facility in the home of a Hamas operative.
The armed wing of Hamas ally Islamic Jihad said its fighters targeted Israeli forces in Zeitoun neighbourhood in northern Gaza City with mortar bombs.
Militants also fought Israeli troops in the centre of Khan Younis city in the south, residents said, while Israeli tanks shelled the eastern villages of Mughraqa and Juhr Eldeek in central Gaza Strip, where fighting has intensified with Hamas gunmen in the past days.
In Khan Younis in southern Gaza, residents reported hearing Israeli planes and tanks bombing and shelling and the sound of rocket grenades, apparently fired by Hamas fighters.
Medics said Israeli forces had shelled the courtyard of the city’s Nasser hospital and surrounding areas, with a new air strike on a school there on Sunday morning.
The Israeli military said it had killed seven “terrorists” in an air strike on Khan Younis and found rocket manufacturing parts and three tunnel shafts near a school used as a shelter. It also said it had struck the local Hamas commander’s office and gained control over the central Bani Suheila Square.
Israel says it goes to great lengths to avoid hitting civilians as it seeks to eliminate Hamas, which has run Gaza since 2006 and is sworn to Israel’s destruction.
Mr Netanyahu said on Saturday the war in Gaza was existential and must be fought until victory, with the enclave demilitarised and under Israeli security control.
“The instruction I am giving the negotiating team is predicated on this pressure, without which we have nothing,” he told a press conference, sidestepping a question on the meeting in Europe between his spy chief David Barnea and Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani. Barnea later returned to Israel.
The accidental killing of three hostages by Israeli forces has put increased pressure on Mr Netanyahu to find a way to secure the release of those held.
Hamas reiterated that it would not negotiate any exchange “unless the aggression against our people stops once and for all”.
In the southern town of Rafah, people rushed to help rescue families trapped under the rubble of a building that housed dozens of people, including some from the north who had followed Israeli army warnings to head south to avoid ground operations.
Mahmoud Jarbou’, who lives nearby, said the sound of the explosion was “as powerful as an earthquake”.
“We were sitting in the house when suddenly shrapnel fell on us and people were screaming and streaming out into the street.”
Earlier on Sunday, France called for an “immediate truce” between Israel and Hamas, and the French foreign ministry said one of its workers had died after being wounded during an Israeli attack in Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip.
The man was seeking refuge in the house of a colleague from the French consulate alongside two other co-workers and a number of their family members, the ministry statement issued late on Saturday said.
“The house was hit by an Israeli air strike on Wednesday evening, which seriously hurt our agent and killed about 10 others,” it said, adding he had later died of his wounds.
The statement said France condemned the bombing of a residential building. “We demand that the Israeli authorities shed full light on the circumstances of this bombing, as soon as possible,” it said.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“We’re waiting for clarification [from Israel],” said French foreign affairs minister Catherine Colonna shortly after meeting her Israeli counterpart, Eli Cohen, in Tel Aviv on Sunday.
She called for an “immediate truce” between Hamas and Israel to allow for a humanitarian ceasefire.
Israel appeared to confirm new negotiations were under way to recover hostages held by Hamas, after a source said Israel’s intelligence chief met the prime minister of Qatar, a country mediating in the Israeli-Hamas conflict.
At least five Palestinians were killed on Sunday in an Israeli attack on Tulkarm in the occupied West Bank, the Hamas-controlled Palestinian health ministry said.
Aid organisations say the destruction of Gaza and the displacement of most of its 2.3 million people – many living in tents and makeshift shelters without food or clean water – is a humanitarian crisis.
The Kerem Shalom border crossing between Israel and Gaza opened for the first time for aid trucks since the outbreak of the war on Saturday, a spokesperson from the Israeli prime minister’s office said.
The crossing had been closed to aid trucks since the October 7th onslaught by Hamas militants on Israeli southern communities. Israel agreed to reopen the crossing to aid trucks last week. – Reuters