Israel strikes Gaza after accusing Hamas of ceasefire violations

Israel has carried out air strikes in Gaza, in response to what Israeli officials said were violations of the US-brokered ceasefire agreement.

Defence Minister Israel Katz accused Hamas of attacking Israeli soldiers in Gaza on Tuesday, and breaching the terms on returning the bodies of deceased hostages.

The Palestinian armed group claimed it had “no connection” to the attack and insisted it was committed to the ceasefire deal.

First responders in Gaza said at least nine Palestinians were killed in a wave of Israeli strikes across the territory on Tuesday evening.

Despite the flare-up, US Vice-President JD Vance said he believed the ceasefire was holding.

A brief statement put out by Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office on Tuesday evening said he had ordered “forceful strikes” by the military but did not specify his reasons.

However, Defence Minister Katz said Hamas had crossed “a bright red line” by launching an attack on Israeli soldiers in Gaza on Tuesday.

“Hamas will pay many times over for attacking the soldiers and for violating the agreement to return the fallen hostages,” he warned.

An Israeli military official said the attack took place “east of the Yellow Line”, which demarcates Israeli-controlled territory inside Gaza under the ceasefire deal.

Israeli media reported that troops in the southern Gaza city of Rafah had come under anti-tank missile and sniper fire on Tuesday afternoon, while Palestinian media reported Israeli artillery shelling in the area at the same time.

After the Israeli military carried out air strikes in Gaza on Tuesday evening, witnesses reported powerful explosions in several parts of the territory, including Gaza City in the north and Khan Younis in the south.

A spokesman for the Hamas-run Civil Defence agency told the BBC that at least four people were killed, including three women, when a home belonging to the al-Banna family was bombed in the southern Sabra neighbourhood of Gaza City.

Strikes also reportedly hit a courtyard of al-Shifa hospital, in the western Rimal area.

The Civil Defence spokesman said another five people were killed, including two children and a woman, when a vehicle was hit on al-Qassam Street in Khan Younis.

Hamas put out a statement denying that its fighters had attacked Israeli troops and condemning the Israeli strikes.

“Hamas affirms that it has no connection to the shooting incident in Rafah and affirms its commitment to the ceasefire agreement,” it said.

“The criminal bombardment carried out by the fascist occupation [Israeli] army on areas of the Gaza Strip represents a blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement.”

The group’s military wing meanwhile said it would postpone the return of a hostage’s body it had recovered on Tuesday due to what it called Israeli “violations”.

US Vice-President Vance told reporters in Washington: “The ceasefire is holding. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t going to be little skirmishes here and there.”

“We know that Hamas or somebody else within Gaza attacked an [Israeli] soldier. We expect the Israelis are going to respond, but I think the president’s peace is going to hold despite that,” he added.

Earlier, Israel’s prime minister had pledged to take unspecified “steps” against Hamas after the group handed over a coffin containing human remains on Monday night that did not belong to one of the 13 deceased hostages still in Gaza.

Netanyahu’s office said forensic tests showed they belonged to Ofir Tzarfati, an Israeli hostage whose body was recovered by Israeli forces in Gaza in late 2023, and that this constituted a “clear violation” of the ceasefire deal.

The Israeli military also released footage from a drone that it said showed Hamas operatives “removing body remains from a structure that had been prepared in advance and burying them nearby” in eastern Gaza City on Monday.

“Shortly afterwards,” it added, the operatives “summoned representatives of the Red Cross and staged a false display of discovering a deceased hostage’s body.”

Hamas rejected what it called the “baseless allegations” and accused Israel of “seeking to fabricate false pretexts in preparation for taking new aggressive steps”.

In a statement later the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) condemned what it called the “fake recovery”, saying it had attended the scene “at the request of Hamas” and “in good faith”.

It went on: “The ICRC team at this location were not aware that a deceased person had been placed there prior to their arrival, as seen in the footage – in general, our role as neutral intermediary does not include unearthing of the bodies of the deceased.

“Our team only observed what appeared to be the recovery of remains without prior knowledge of the circumstances leading up to it.

“It is unacceptable that a fake recovery was staged, when so much depends on this agreement being upheld and when so many families are still anxiously awaiting news of their loved ones.”

The ceasefire agreement brokered by the US, Egypt, Qatar and Turkey is supposed to implement the first stage of President Donald Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan.

It said Hamas would return its 48 living and deceased hostages within 72 hours of the ceasefire taking effect on 10 October.

All 20 living Israeli hostages were released on 13 October in exchange for 250 Palestinian prisoners and 1,718 detainees from Gaza.

Israel has also handed over the bodies of 195 Palestinians in exchange for the bodies of the 13 Israeli hostages so far returned by Hamas, along with those of two foreign hostages – one of them Thai and the other Nepalese.

Eleven of the dead hostages still in Gaza are Israelis, one is Tanzanian, and one is Thai.

On Saturday, Hamas’s chief negotiator Khalil al-Hayya said the group was facing challenges because Israeli forces had “altered the terrain of Gaza”. He also said that “some of those who buried the bodies have been martyred or no longer remember where they buried them”.

However, the Israeli government insists Hamas knows the locations of all the bodies.

All but one of the dead hostages still in Gaza were among the 251 people abducted during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, during which about 1,200 other people were killed.

Israel responded by launching a military campaign in Gaza, during which more than 68,530 people have been killed, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.