At least 91 Palestinians have been killed and many more injured in a third day of Israeli strikes across Gaza, according to medical officials in the strip who said a high proportion of the dead were women and children.
The timing of the strikes in the new Israeli offensive appears to have increased the proportion of women and children among the victims, with many sleeping when the missiles struck overnight or very early in the morning. Among those pulled alive from rubble on Thursday was a month-old baby girl, but her parents and brother were killed.
A first wave of airstrikes on Tuesday shattered a two-month pause in hostilities and killed more than 400, according to the health ministry in Gaza, in what may have been the single bloodiest day of the 18-month conflict. The dead included 183 children and 94 women, Palestinian officials said.
New warnings telling Palestinians to evacuate areas in the north and east of Gaza to avoid being trapped by fighting have been issued by the Israeli military, suggesting ground assaults could be imminent, although Israel appears to be relying on air power for now.
Thursday’s Israeli strikes appeared concentrated on the southern cities of Rafah and Khan Younis and the northern town of Beit Lahiya.
A strike on a family home in Abasan al-Kabira, a village near Khan Younis, killed at least 16 people, mostly women and children, according to the nearby European hospital, which received the dead. Those killed included a father and his seven children, as well as the parents and brother of a month-old baby who survived along with her grandparents.
The home was within an area covered by a recent evacuation order.
“The house collapsed over the people’s heads,” said Hani Awad, who was helping rescuers search for more survivors in the rubble.
The European hospital in the southern city of Rafah said it had received 26 bodies after the overnight strikes, mostly women and children. The Nasser hospital in Khan Younis received the bodies of seven people killed in an attack on a home. In northern Gaza, the Indonesian hospital said it had received the bodies of seven people killed in a strike in Beit Lahiya, a town near the border. A second strike in Beit Lahiya killed many mourners at a funeral, survivors said.
A spokesperson for the Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al Balah said in 70% of the injured were women and children, most arriving in critical condition.
Zaher Al-Wahidi, Director of the Health Information Center at the Ministry of Health in Gaza said the situation in all hospitals in Gaza was catastrophic.
“The injured are lying on the ground with blood covering the floors of the hospitals. We are suffering greatly from a shortage of supplies for emergency and intensive care, as well as for surgeries and medical equipment. There is a severe shortage of fuel stations, desalination stations, oxygen, and a critical shortage of fuel in the hospitals,” al-Wahidi told the Guardian.
In its first military response to the Israeli offensive since the ceasefire was broken, Hamas fired rockets at Tel Aviv, the major Israeli city and commercial hub. No casualties or damage was reported.
Lt Col Nadav Shoshani, a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces, said earlier this week that Israel had attacked “terror targets and terrorists in Gaza … to weaken their military and governmental capabilities and remove threats to Israel”.
Israeli media have reported that the new air offensive is aimed at senior political and military Hamas officials, and have identified several killed, including the head of Hamas’s internal security agency.
On Wednesday the IDF reoccupied theNetzarim corridor, a key strip of land that divides Gaza into northern and southern halves.
As part of the ceasefire deal signed in January after more than a year of indirect negotiations, Israel had withdrawn from the corridor, where it had demolished almost all existing buildings, widened a road and built a series of strongpoints.
Israel and Hamas blame each other for the collapse of the ceasefire, which had largely held since coming into effect in mid-January and had brought some respite for Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants.
Hamas, which still holds 59 of about 250 hostages it seized in the October 2023 attack into southern Israel that triggered the conflict, says it wants to conclude the three-phase ceasefire deal agreed after more than a year of indirect talks mediated by Egypt, Qatar and the US. More than half of the hostages are thought to be dead.
The group said on Thursday that talks with mediators to halt the Israeli offensive were continuing, and called again for Israel to abide by the earlier agreement.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, and other Israel officials said the decision to renew attacks in Gaza came after Hamas had rejected proposals for a 30-60-day extension of the first phase of the three-phase ceasefire.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House Press Secretary, said on Thursday that the President Trump backed Israel’s new offensive and blamed Hamas for the violence.
“He fully supports Israel and the IDF and the actions that they’ve taken in recent days,” Leavitt told reporters.
“Let’s not forget that this situation is completely the fault of Hamas when they launched that brutal attack on Israel on October 7, and the president has made it very clear that he wants all of those hostages to come home.”
Hamas does not appear to have responded militarily to the new Israeli offensive, but sirens sounded across much of Israel at 4am on Thursday to warn of an incoming missile launched by the Yemen-based Houthi militia. The missile was intercepted by Israel’s air defence system.
The Hamas surprise attack in 2023 killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 49,000 Palestinians, also mostly civilians.
Critics in Israel have accused Netanyahu of resuming the offensive to reinforce his coalition government before a crucial budget vote in parliament, to rally support for the war in the face of popular backing for a ceasefire to return the hostages, and to head off widespread public anger over his attempt to fire the head of the internal security service, the Shin Bet.
Underlining the deep divisions in Israel, hundreds of Israelis protesters outside Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem on Thursday. Police used a water cannon after some tried to break through barricades. More demonstrations were planned on Thursday.
