Israeli forces this week conducted the deadliest wave of air strikes since the start of a truce in January, killing hundreds of people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
As Israel kept up its renewed bombardment despite a chorus of calls from foreign governments to preserve the ceasefire, long lines of fleeing civilians filled the roads of Gaza on Wednesday.
Fred Oola, senior medical officer at the Red Cross field hospital in Rafah, said the renewed strikes had shattered the relative calm of the past two months.
Addressing the “residents of Gaza” -- ruled by Hamas since 2007 -- Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said in a video statement: “This is the last warning.”
He was referring to a warning earlier this month by US President Donald Trump, who said: “To the People of Gaza: A beautiful Future awaits, but not if you hold Hostages. If you do, you are DEAD!”
Impasse
He rejected, however, Israeli demands to renegotiate the three-stage deal agreed with Egyptian, Qatari and US mediators.
Talks have stalled over how to proceed with the ceasefire, whose first phase expired in early March.
That would delay the start of phase two, which was meant to establish a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza while the remaining hostages are released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
“They don’t like the second phase because it involves ending the war without necessarily achieving their objective of ending Hamas.”
Israel and its ally the United States have portrayed Hamas's rejection of an extended phase one as a refusal to release more hostages.
A UN Office for Project Services employee was killed and at least five other people were wounded when a UN building in the central city of Deir el-Balah was hit, the agency said.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was “shocked” by the staff member’s death and called for “a full investigation”, said spokesman Farhan Haq.
Hamas called the incident “part of (Israel‘s) systematic policy of targeting civilians and aid workers, aiming to terrorise them and prevent them from fulfilling their humanitarian duty”.
Thousands of Israeli protesters massed in Jerusalem, accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of resuming strikes on Gaza without regard for the safety of the remaining hostages.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Israel's raids on Gaza “are shattering the tangible hopes of so many Israelis and Palestinians of an end to suffering on all sides”.
The war began with Hamas's 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in 1,218 deaths, mostly civilians, according to Israeli figures.
The agency reported 14 members of the same family killed in an Israeli strike in the north.
As of Monday, before the intense strikes resumed, the overall death toll in Gaza since the start of the war stood at more than 48,570, according to the territory's health ministry.
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