Israeli strikes kill 24 in Gaza as Hamas calls on the US to step in

Israel’s military unleashed a fresh barrage of airstrikes across Gaza on Saturday, shattering the uneasy calm of a six-week-old ceasefire and leaving at least 24 Palestinians — among them children — dead, the Al Jazeera reported.

Another 87 were wounded as explosions rippled from Gaza City to the heart of Deir el-Balah and the crowded lanes of the Nuseirat refugee camp.

Witnesses described a grim morning that began with a strike on a car in northern Gaza City, followed quickly by a succession of attacks. A drone strike in the city’s Remal neighbourhood tore through a residential pocket, killing 11 people and injuring 20, al-Shifa Hospital’s managing director Rami Mhanna informed the Al Jazeera.

Deir el-Balah, too, trembled under the force of an explosion that killed at least three people, including a woman. “The blast shook everything,” said resident Khalil Abu Hatab. “Smoke swallowed the neighbourhood… the upper floor of my neighbour’s house simply vanished. How can anyone call this a ceasefire? There is no safe place left.”

In Nuseirat, survivor Anas al-Saloul recounted how a missile struck without warning. “Everyone in the street was covered in debris,” he said, describing how neighbours rushed the wounded to hospital amid chaos.

According to Gaza’s Government Media Office, Saturday’s strikes were only the latest in a cascade of violations — 497 in all — since the US-brokered truce took effect on 10 October. At least 342 civilians have been killed in that period, most of them women, children and the elderly. The office condemned what it called Israel’s “systematic breaches” of international humanitarian law.

Israel offered its own rationale: the prime minister’s office said the strikes were launched after a Hamas fighter attacked Israeli soldiers in Israeli-held territory, adding that five Hamas fighters were killed in response. Hamas did not immediately comment.

As bombs fell, the Palestinian group accused Israel of inventing pretexts to unravel the truce. It urged mediators — the US, Egypt and Qatar — to step in, accusing Israel of pushing beyond the agreed yellow-line boundary. “We call for urgent intervention,” Hamas said. “The US must uphold its commitments and rein in Israel’s attempts to undercut the ceasefire.”

A senior Hamas official also dismissed reports, carried by Al Arabiya, that the group had withdrawn from the agreement, calling Israel’s claims “fabrications to escape its obligations”.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said people were reliving the trauma they had barely begun to set aside. “The ceasefire was always delicate,” he said. “The violence never truly stopped — it merely slowed into a steady, grinding pattern of death.”

Beyond Gaza, tensions surged in the occupied West Bank. Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian farmers near Masafer Yatta, while Israeli forces wounded two Palestinians during a raid in Dura, south of Hebron, according to the Wafa news agency. The UN recently warned that settler attacks had reached levels unseen since 2006, unfolding amid home demolitions, land seizures and expanding settlements.

UN human rights official Thameen al-Kheetan cautioned that the displacement of Palestinians in occupied territory may amount to unlawful transfer — a war crime — as does relocating Israeli civilians into the West Bank.

As Gaza mourns yet another day of loss, and the West Bank braces under intensifying pressure, the fragile ceasefire appears to be crumbling under the weight of renewed violence — and a future clouded by growing instability.