CAIRO: Israel said it remains committed to the US-backed ceasefire in Gaza, despite its retaliation for the death of an Israeli soldier with day-long bombardment that Gaza health authorities said killed 104 people.
Even as the military affirmed it still intended to uphold the truce in the Palestinian enclave, it announced it had carried out another airstrike in the north of Gaza where it said weapons had been stored. Medics said two people were killed in that attack.
The killing of an Israeli soldier in Gaza on Tuesday has triggered the worst escalation there since the ceasefire brokered by US President Donald Trump came into effect on October 10 after two years of war triggered by deadly Hamas-led attacks on Israel.
Israel says the soldier was killed in an attack by gunmen on territory within the “yellow line” where its troops withdrew under the truce. Hamas has rejected the accusation.
Israel described Wednesday’s attack as a targeted strike near Beit Lahia in the north of the strip, where it said weapons had been stored. It said it would continue to uphold the ceasefire agreement while responding firmly to any violation.
“We want to ensure that the goal that President Trump and we agreed on of disarming Hamas and demilitarizing Gaza is ultimately achieved,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said later on Wednesday during a visit to a military facility in southern Israel where US troops are monitoring the truce.
“There is a real effort here in cooperation, with security being maintained in our own hands,” Netanyahu said, according to a statement released by his office.
In response to the soldier’s death, the military launched what it described as strikes targeting dozens of Hamas fighters across the enclave, as well as weapons depots and tunnels belonging to the group.
It named 24 targets, including one it described as a Hamas commander who took part in an attack on a kibbutz during the October 7, 2023, assault on southern Israel that ignited the war.
The Gaza health ministry said 46 children and 20 women were among the 104 people killed in the airstrikes.
The Hamas-run Gaza government media office issued a statement saying Israel’s list of targets was a product of a “systematic campaign of misinformation, forgery, and lies aimed at distorting the truth and covering up its ongoing crimes against civilians.”
In Nusseirat in the central Gaza Strip, neighbours said the entire Abu Dalal family had been wiped out in an airstrike that flattened their home overnight.
A boy in a wheelchair wailed as the family’s bodies in white plastic body bags were loaded into the back of a flatbed truck. Crowds followed as the bodies were driven through the streets to a cemetery.
“As I understand it, they took out an Israeli soldier,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. “So the Israelis hit back and they should hit back. When that happens, they should hit back,” he added.
“Nothing is going to jeopardise” the ceasefire, Trump said. “You have to understand Hamas is a very small part of peace in the Middle East, and they have to behave.”
He has touted the truce and hostage-prisoner exchange deal as one of the top foreign policy achievements of his second term, and he and his top aides have sought to keep the ceasefire from unravelling.
The latest flare-up has underscored the stumbling blocks to a lasting peace. Key questions of Hamas disarming, further Israeli troop pullbacks and future governance of Gaza remain unresolved.
Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, who has acted as a mediator, said on Wednesday that the attack on the Israeli soldier and subsequent Israeli airstrikes had been “very disappointing and frustrating for us”.
