War in Gaza resumes, dozens of Palestinians killed as truce collapses

Israeli warplanes resumed pounding Gaza, Palestinian civilians fled for shelter and rocket sirens blared in southern Israel on Friday as war resumed after a week-long truce ran out with no deal to extend it. As the deadline lapsed, cities in southern Gaza came under intensive bombardment, sending columns of smoke rising into the sky as residents took to the streets looking for shelter in areas not yet being targeted by the Israeli Defense Forces. 

In the north of the enclave, the main war zone for weeks, huge plumes of smoke rose above the ruins, seen from across the fence in Israel. Barely two hours after the truce expired, Gaza health officials reported that 35 people had already been killed and dozens wounded in air strikes that hit at least eight homes.

Medics and witnesses said the bombing was most intensive in the cities of Khan Younis and Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, and also targeted houses in central and northern areas.

"Anas, my son, I don't have anyone but you my son!" cried the mother of Anas Anwar al-Masri, a boy lying on a stretcher with a head injury in the corridor of Nasser hospital in Khan Younis. "He is my only boy!"

UNICEF on Friday appealed for a lasting ceasefire to be implemented in Gaza, describing inaction as "an approval of the killing of children." 

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The Israeli military announced it had "resumed combat operations" and its warplanes were striking the enclave, accusing Hamas of violating the truce first by firing rockets and failing to free all the women it was holding hostage.

"With the resumption of fighting we emphasize: The Israeli government is committed to achieving the goals of the war - to free our hostages, to eliminate Hamas, and to ensure that Gaza will never pose a threat to the residents of Israel," the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

Hamas said Israel bore responsibility for the end of the truce, for rejecting terms to free more hostages and extend it.

"What Israel did not achieve during the fifty days before the truce, it will not achieve by continuing its aggression after the truce," Ezzat El Rashq, a member of the Hamas political bureau, said on the group's website.

Negotiations upended

The seven-day pause, which began on November 24 and was extended twice, had allowed for the exchange of hostages held in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners and facilitated the entry of humanitarian aid into the shattered coastal strip.

Eighty Israeli women and children hostages were freed in return for 240 Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails, all women and teens. An additional 25 foreign hostages, mainly Thai farmworkers, were also released under parallel deals.

But mediators failed at the final hour to extend the truce by finding a formula for hostage releases to continue, possibly to include Israeli men now that fewer women and children remained in captivity.

Qatar, which has played a central role in mediation efforts, said negotiations were still ongoing with Israelis and Palestinians to restore the truce, but that Israel's renewed bombardment of Gaza had complicated its efforts.

Doha went on to urge swift international action to stop the violence against Gazans, adding "its condemnation of all forms of targeting civilians, the practice of collective punishment, and attempts to forcibly displace and displace citizens of the besieged Gaza Strip."

Israel has sworn to annihilate Hamas, the political group elected to rule the strip, in response to the October 7 attack by the Palestinian resistance group, when Israel says gunmen killed 1,200 people and took 240 hostages. 

Israel's bombardment and ground invasion has killed at least 15,000 Palestinians, thousands of them children, with thousands more missing and feared buried under rubble.

'War on children'

Speaking from an unnamed hospital in Gaza, UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said in a video posted to X, formerly Twitter, on Friday that a bomb had landed "literally 50 meters (yards) away."

"This is a war on children," he stated. "I cannot overstate how much the capacity of hospitals has been reduced... "We cannot see more children with the wounds of war, with the burns, with the shrapnel littering their body, with the broken bones."

The United Nations says as many as 80 percent of Gaza's 2.3 million have been driven from their homes, with no way to escape the narrow territory, many sleeping rough in makeshift shelters. Israel has imposed a total siege, and residents and humanitarian agencies say aid that arrived during the truce was trivial compared to the vast needs of so many displaced people.

"I cannot overstate how much the capacity of hospitals has been reduced," he said. "We cannot see more children with the wounds of war, with the burns, with the shrapnel littering their body, with the broken bones."

"This is a war on children," he added.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who had met Israeli and Palestinian officials on Thursday on his third trip to the region since the war began, declined to comment on the collapse of the truce to reporters travelling on his plane.

The day before, Blinken had called on Israel to do more to protect civilians once fighting resumes. He had praised the truce and said Washington hoped it would be extended.

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