reporting from Cairo and London
The Israeli military says it is carrying out “extensive strikes” in the Gaza Strip, with the Hamas-run health ministry reporting that more than 400 Palestinians have been killed.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was attacking what it called “terror targets” belonging to Hamas. The strikes are continuing and the IDF has recently issued fresh evacuation orders for many areas.
Mahmoud Abu Wafah, the deputy interior minister in Gaza and the highest-ranking Hamas security official in the territory, is among the dead.
This is the largest wave of air strikes in Gaza since the ceasefire began on 19 January. Talks to extend the Gaza ceasefire have failed to reach an agreement.
Many people were having their pre-dawn meal, part of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, when explosions started in Gaza, witnesses say.
They described a nightmarish situation, with fires and bodies everywhere, and wounded people desperate for treatment.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Israel Katz ordered the strikes on Tuesday morning, a statement from the prime minister’s office said.
“This follows Hamas’s repeated refusal to release our hostages, as well as its rejection of all of the proposals it has received from US Presidential Envoy Steve Witkoff and from the mediators.”
“Israel will, from now on, act against Hamas with increasing military strength,” it added.
Israel says Hamas is still holding 59 hostages – all but one who were taken on 7 October 2023. Twenty-four of the hostages are believed to still be alive.
Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, warned Hamas to release all the hostages, stating “we will show no mercy on our enemies”.
But a group representing hostages’ families said the Israeli government “chose to give up the hostages”.
The statement by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum expressed shock and anger at what it called the “deliberate dismantling of the process to return our loved ones”.
The group later issued an emergency call for a protest in Jerusalem, saying the hostages were “in grave danger”.
The Israeli air force attacked targets in Gaza City, Rafah and Khan Younis in the early hours of Tuesday.
Ramez Alammarin, 25, told AFP news agency how he carried children to hospital south-east of Gaza City.
“They unleashed the fire of Hell again on Gaza,” he said of Israel, adding that “bodies and limbs are on the ground, and the wounded cannot find any doctor to treat them”.
Mohammed Bdeir told Reuters news agency: “We were sleeping, then suddenly woke up on the strike, they hit our neighbours… we found this girl beneath the rubble, we pulled her mother and father from under the rubble.”
They eventually found his daughter’s body underneath the rubble, he said.
“It was a tough night for everyone,” Rosalia Bollen, a spokesperson for the UN’s children’s charity Unicef working in al-Mawasi, Gaza, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
She woke up to the sound “of very, very loud explosions, our guest house was shaking. For the next 15 minutes… we heard explosions almost every five or six seconds”.
She described hearing yelling and sirens outside, as the sound of planes continued overhead.
ReutersUN officials have condemned the strikes.
The Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Muhannad Hadi, said: “This is unconscionable. A ceasefire must be reinstated immediately. People in Gaza have endured unimaginable suffering.”
Hamas responded furiously to the bombardment, accusing Israel of treachery over the ceasefire. It also said Israel had exposed the remaining hostages to “an unknown fate”.
But Hamas has not yet declared that it is resuming the war, instead calling on mediators and the United Nations to intervene.
US President Donald Trump’s administration was consulted by Israel prior to carrying out the strikes, a White House spokesperson told Fox News.
Negotiators have been trying to find a way forward after the first phase of the temporary truce ended on 1 March.
The US proposed extending the first phase until mid-April, including a further exchange of hostages held by Hamas and Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
But a Palestinian official familiar with the talks told the BBC that Israel and Hamas disagreed over key aspects of the deal set out by Witkoff at the indirect talks.
The war between Israel and Hamas was triggered by Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people – mostly civilians – were killed, and 251 others taken hostage.
The assault triggered an Israeli military offensive that has since killed more than 48,520 people, most of them civilians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Most of Gaza’s 2.1 million population has been displaced, many of them several times.
An estimated 70% of buildings have been damaged or destroyed, healthcare, water, and sanitation systems have collapsed and there are shortages of food, fuel, medicine and shelter.
