‘Catastrophic’: Israeli strikes kill dozens at home in Gaza after ground troops return

It wasn’t immediately clear how many troops were involved in the operation or whether they were the precursor for a full invasion as happened in 2023. At its height, tens of thousands of Israeli soldiers were involved in military operations against Hamas.

The military said it had retaken part of the Netzarim Corridor that divides northern Gaza from the south, and from where it had previously withdrawn as part of a ceasefire that began in January.

That truce was shattered on Tuesday by Israeli airstrikes that killed more than 400 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza health ministry. Within Israel, the resumption of airstrikes has raised concerns about the fate of roughly two dozen hostages held by Hamas who are believed to still be alive.

Advances by Israel since then – which included sending more troops to southern Gaza – threatened to drag the sides into all-out war again. The ceasefire had given war-weary Palestinians some respite, allowed a much-needed surge of humanitarian aid into Gaza – and led to the release of dozens of hostages who had been held for more than 17 months.

Hamas spokesman Abdel-Latif al-Qanou said the advance of Israeli ground forces in Gaza was a clear sign Israel had backed out of the truce and was reimposing a “blockade”. There have been no reports of retaliatory rocket attacks by Hamas after Tuesday’s bombardment.

On Wednesday, the United Nations said one of its employees was killed in Gaza and five others were wounded in an apparent strike on a guest house. Israel denied Palestinian claims that it hit the guest house, and the UN said it was not immediately clear who was behind the strike.

Early on Thursday, a missile launched from Yemen was intercepted before reaching Israeli airspace, the military said. No injuries were reported. Yemen’s Houthi militants, who warned earlier in the week they would expand their range of targets in Israel in retaliation for the renewed airstrikes in Gaza, claimed responsibility.

The Israeli military said its “limited ground operation” in Gaza would create a “partial buffer between northern and southern Gaza”.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether the move would entirely close the Netzarim route, blocking Palestinians from travelling through it.

Israel used the roughly six-kilometre corridor as a military zone during the war. It ran from the Israeli border to the coast just south of Gaza City, severing the territory’s largest metropolitan area and the rest of the north from the south.

During the war, Israeli soldiers fortified the road, building up a network of outposts and bases. They also levelled hundreds of buildings for kilometres around it to create a clear line of sight, and funnelled those allowed to cross through military checkpoints, The New York Times reported.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who had fled to the south were prevented from returning throughout the war, until Israel withdrew from Netzarim in January. Many of them have since returned.

But Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said the military would soon order Palestinians to evacuate from combat zones.

“The air force attack against Hamas terrorists was just the first step. The rest will be much more difficult and you will pay the full price,” he said in a video statement addressing the population of Gaza.

Jorge Moreira da Silva, head of the UN Office for Project Services, declined to say who carried out the strike in the central city of Deir al-Balah. He said the explosive ordnance was “dropped or fired” and the blast was not accidental or related to de-mining activity.

He did not provide the nationalities of the dead worker or wounded employees. The UN body carries out infrastructure and development projects around the world.

Silva said strikes had hit near the compound on Monday, striking it directly on Tuesday and again on Wednesday.

He said the agency had contacted the Israeli military after the first strike. “Israel knew this was a UN premise, that people were living, staying and working there,” he said.

Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesperson, said the explosion was not caused by Israeli fire. “There were no forces around that building, no aerial attacks on that area,” he said.

After the strike, the wounded were rushed to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah. One man was carried inside on a blanket held up by medical workers. Another lay on a hospital bed, his knee bandaged. A blue protective vest emblazoned with “UN” rested on a nearby bed.

The Gaza health ministry said at least 436 people, including 183 children and 94 women, have been killed since Israel launched the strikes in the early hours of Tuesday. It said another 678 people were wounded.

The military says it only strikes militants and blames civilian deaths on Hamas because it operates in densely populated areas.

The war has killed nearly 49,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, and displaced 90 per cent of Gaza’s population. The health ministry doesn’t differentiate between civilians and militants but says more than half of the dead have been women and children.

The war erupted when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing some 1200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages. Most hostages have been released in ceasefires or other deals; 59 remain, but more than half are believed to be dead.

Israel and Hamas were set to negotiate an extension of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement, which lasted six weeks.

But those negotiations never got off the ground. Hamas demands that Israel stick to the terms of the initial ceasefire deal, including a full withdrawal from Gaza and an end to the war. Israel, which has vowed to defeat Hamas, has put forward a new proposal that would extend the truce and free more hostages held by Hamas, without a commitment to end the war.

The breakdown of the ceasefire was met with anger in Israel, where many support the plight of the hostage families to free their loved ones.

Israel’s return to a military campaign came as Netanyahu faces mounting domestic pressure, with mass protests taking place over his handling of the hostage crisis and his plan to fire the head of Israel’s internal security agency.

AP, Bloomberg