Israel conducts fresh strike in Gaza after overnight bombardment kills 104

Tensions in West Asia escalated after Israel carried out another strike in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, killing at least 104 Palestinians in the overnight bombardment. The strike that also killed children in the region is now being seen as the gravest challenge yet to the increasingly fragile US-brokered ceasefire.

In a statement following the incident, the Israeli military claimed that it struck military infrastructure where weapons were being stored for an imminent attack in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza. Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City said it had received two bodies from the strike. The latest strike occurred following the overnight Tuesday bombardment.

After unleashing its wrath, Israel said that it is now adhering to the ceasefire again, and statements from US officials seemed to indicate they did not consider the truce to have been broken or violated. However, many raise concerns over Israel’s willingness to abide by the deal, which forbade both sides from attacking.

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What is concerning is the fact that the Israeli strikes took place just hours after US President Donald Trump said that nothing would jeopardise his ceasefire agreement. Meanwhile, the Israeli military released an infographic showing 25 “terrorists” it had killed in Gaza over the past 24 hours. Still, it did not explain the identity of the other 79 people it had killed in the strike.

Israeli military pledges to uphold the ceasefire

The Tuesday and Wednesday strikes have shattered the short-lived relief Palestinians had felt since the start of the ceasefire. Funerals were held for the victims of the latest attacks at hospitals across Gaza on Wednesday. Some had been carried into medical facilities in the arms of loved ones.

While the news of atrocities was coming out of Gaza, the Israeli military said in a statement that it would continue to uphold the ceasefire agreement but would respond “firmly to any violation”. Meanwhile, the Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson, Oren Marmorstein, blamed Hamas for the strikes and attributed the high death toll to the group using civilians as human shields.

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Hamas, on the other hand, said that the strikes “revealed Israel’s intention to undermine the ceasefire and impose new realities by force”. It said it would continue to adhere to the agreement in a statement issued on Wednesday. “Among these attacks was the targeting of a cancer patient camp, the Insan camp," The director of humanitarian support and international cooperation at Gaza’s civil defence agency, Dr Mohammed al-Mughir, said in a statement.

It is pertinent to note that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the Tuesday strikes after a firefight between Palestinian militants and Israeli troops, and amid growing anger over Hamas turning over body parts of a hostage whose remains Israeli troops had recovered two years before.

The bombardment eventually prompted Hamas, which denied involvement in the gunfight, to delay a planned handover of another hostage’s remains, which had been scheduled for Tuesday night. Despite all this, the US vice-president, JD Vance, said earlier that the ceasefire was holding despite “skirmishes”. The same sentiments were also echoed by American President Donald Trump.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Wednesday, Trump said nothing would jeopardise the ceasefire but that Israel “should hit back” if its soldiers were killed. “They killed an Israeli soldier. So the Israelis hit back. And they should hit back,” he exclaimed. Overall, the region continues to exist on a fragile ceasefire.