PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES (AFP) — Israel vowed on Tuesday to continue fighting in Gaza until the return of all hostages as it unleashed its most intense strikes since a ceasefire, with the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory reporting more than 330 people killed.
Hamas accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of deciding to “resume war” after a deadlock on extending the truce, and warned that the return to fighting could be a “death sentence” for hostages still alive in Gaza.
“Netanyahu’s decision to resume war is a decision to sacrifice the occupation’s prisoners and impose a death sentence on them,” it said in a statement.
Netanyahu’s office said the operation was ordered after “Hamas” 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.
“We will not stop fighting as long as the hostages are not returned home and all our war aims are not achieved,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said.
Apart from the release of the remaining hostages, Israel’s other main war aim is to crush Hamas.
In a post on Telegram in the early hours of Tuesday, the Israeli army said it was “conducting extensive strikes on terror targets belonging to the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip.”
Mohammed Zaqut, head of the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, said “at least 330 deaths” had been recorded, “most of them Palestinian women and children.”
He said there were “hundreds of wounded, dozens of them in critical condition.”
Israel ordered all schools near the Gaza border to shut.