Israeli forces launched deadly aerial attacks across the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, ending a temporary cease-fire with Hamas that began in January and raising the prospect of a return to all-out war.
More than 400 people, including children, were killed in the strikes, Gaza’s health ministry said. Those numbers did not distinguish between civilians and combatants — but the relentless Israeli bombardment produced one of the war’s deadliest single-day tolls.
The attacks came after weeks of fruitless negotiations aimed at extending the fragile cease-fire, which paused 15 months of devastating fighting in the territory. The truce’s first phase expired in early March, but it had largely held as diplomats worked to broker an extension to free the surviving Israeli hostages and end the war.
The office of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said he had ordered the military operation after Hamas’s “repeated refusal” to release the remaining captives seized in the Oct. 7, 2023 assault on Israel and the bodies of those hostages who have died. Of the 59 remaining in Gaza, fewer than half are believed to be alive.
In an address later on Tuesday, Mr. Netanyahu suggested that more Israeli attacks in Gaza were coming and would be carried out in tandem with negotiations with Hamas. “This is just the beginning,” he said. “We will keep fighting to achieve all of the war’s objectives.”
Hamas officials argued that Israel had brazenly overturned the truce, but did not immediately respond militarily to the strikes. It was unclear whether the Palestinian armed group — badly weakened after more than a year of war — would strike back or head to the negotiating table.
Suhail al-Hindi, a member of Hamas’s political office, said the group still hoped to restore the cease-fire but reserved the right to respond. “How to respond is left to those on the ground,” he said in a phone interview. “They know and understand how to respond to the occupation.”
Gideon Saar, Israel’s foreign minister, said the decision to strike had been made several days ago, after Hamas rejected two proposals offered by Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Middle East envoy.
“This is not a one-day operation,” Mr. Saar said in a speech on Tuesday in Jerusalem. “We will pursue military action in the days to come. We found ourselves in a dead end, with no hostages released and no military action. This situation cannot continue.”
In Israel, relatives of the hostages said the renewed Israeli attacks had heightened their fears that the remaining captives might never return alive. They accused Mr. Netanyahu and his government of abandoning the hostages, and some gathered in rallies demanding an immediate deal with Hamas to secure their freedom.
“Military action endangers hostages’ lives and directly harms them,” Alexander Troufanov, a hostage freed during the recent truce, told a crowd in Tel Aviv. “But this morning, I was horrified to find that decision makers choose not to listen.”
The hostages in Gaza “are going through hell because of the decision to return to fighting,” he added.
The Trump administration — which has been seeking to broker a deal between Israel and Hamas — appeared to back Israel’s decision to resume wide-scale attacks in Gaza. Karoline Leavitt, the White House’s press secretary, said Israel had consulted with the United States before launching its assault.
Brian Hughes, a spokesman for the National Security Council in Washington, blamed Hamas for Israel’s renewed attacks, saying in a statement on Tuesday that “Hamas could have released hostages to extend the cease-fire but instead chose refusal and war.”
The Israeli airstrikes in Gaza began slightly before 2:30 a.m. local time. Their ferocity recalled the war’s earliest days, when Israel launched heavy attacks in the enclave. Images from the territory showed people using flashlights to search through the rubble of flattened buildings, bodies lined up in bags and distraught families fleeing with their belongings packed on trucks.
Ramez Souri, a resident of Gaza City, in the north of the enclave, said he had awakened to the sound of explosions, followed by the rush of ambulances.
“All of Gaza shook,” Mr. Souri said.
More than 48,000 Gazans have been killed since the beginning of the war, according to the Gaza health ministry, and millions have been displaced.
Many Gazans had returned to their devastated neighborhoods during the cease-fire, said Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for the Palestinian Civil Defense. They were sheltering together in the few homes that remained standing, he said.
“There are entire families that were buried under the rubble,” Mr. Basal said.
UNICEF said that among those killed were 130 children, the largest single-day child death toll in the past year in Gaza. The airstrikes hit shelters where they were sleeping with their families, UNICEF said.
Suzanne Abu Daqqa, who lives in Abasan, a southern suburb of Khan Younis, described a sudden wave of explosions in the middle of the night. She said she rushed to check the news, as did her family.
“Then we saw it wasn’t just in our neighborhood — it was all over Gaza,” Ms. Abu Daqqa said.
Some of the bombs hit Abasan, she said. On Tuesday morning, the Israeli military called on residents of the area to evacuate, calling it a “dangerous combat zone.”
Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said the bombing had targeted “Hamas military commanders, officials in Hamas’s leadership and terrorist infrastructure.”
Hamas said that two of the group’s senior officials killed had been members of its political bureau. Others held senior security roles, including one who was the director of Hamas’s feared internal security agency. Another militant group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, also said the spokesman for its military wing had been killed.
Before the airstrikes began, Israel and Hamas had been trying to reach an agreement on the second phase of the truce. During the first phase, Hamas released more than 30 hostages, and the remains of eight others, in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
During the second phase, Israeli forces were to fully withdraw from Gaza and Hamas was to release the surviving hostages seized during the attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed about 1,200 people in Israel, abducted 251 others and ignited the fighting.
The two sides have not been able agree on the second phase of the cease-fire. Israel is still vowing to destroy Hamas and is insisting on the demilitarization of Gaza. Hamas has largely refused to disband its armed battalions.
Critics of Mr. Netanyahu have argued that the prime minister has avoided a viable agreement with Hamas to end the war and free more hostages in order to preserve his political coalition, which includes far-right supporters of long-term Israeli rule in Gaza.
On Tuesday, Itamar Ben-Gvir announced that his far-right Jewish Power party would rejoin Mr. Netanyahu’s government to support the renewed offensive. In January, Mr. Ben-Gvir left in protest of the cease-fire with Hamas. Once approved, his party’s lawmakers would bolster Mr. Netanyahu’s thin majority in Parliament.
Daniel B. Shapiro, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, said on Tuesday: “Hamas’s insistence on holding on to hostages as leverage, and Netanyahu’s politically driven refusal to proceed with Phase 2 of the cease-fire, which called for an end to the war and the release of all living hostages, led to this escalation.”
Israel has killed thousands of Hamas’s fighters and destroyed much of its tunnel network, which had been used, among other things, to store weapons. Hamas’s ability to fire rockets at Israel has also been undermined.
Mr. Saar, the Israeli foreign minister, suggested that Israel would return to the negotiating table if Hamas made major concessions over Gaza’s future.
“If we could achieve the same goals in a different way, fine,” he said. “But if it’s impossible to advance that way, you resume military operations.”
Hamas officials have vowed that would not happen. “War and destruction will not bring the enemy what they failed to get through negotiations,” Izzat al-Rishq, a Hamas official, said.
Reporting was contributed by Adam Rasgon, Ephrat Livni, Eric Schmitt, Julian E. Barnes, Hiba Yazbek and Johnatan Reiss.
