Samer al-Atbash stood in a Gaza City street after the strikes and counted the children he had lost. “We found my three little nieces in the street, they say ceasefire and all, what did those children do, what did we do?” he said.
The girls were among 27 people killed on Jan 31 in Israel’s heaviest bombardment of Gaza in weeks, Palestinian health officials said. Three of the dead were children. Bombs fell on a police station, on houses and on tents where displaced families were sheltering.
Where the strikes landed
The deadliest single blow hit the Sheikh Radwan police station, west of Gaza City. Medics and police in Gaza said 10 officers and detainees died there. Hamas-run police said rescue crews were still searching the site for more casualties.
Other raids struck at least two houses in Gaza City. In Khan Younis, further south, an encampment housing displaced Palestinians was hit. Video from Gaza City showed an apartment in a multi-storey block with blackened, broken walls, and rubble spread through the rooms and out onto the street.
Israel’s account
The Israeli military said it went after Hamas commanders and sites linked to Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad, and that it also hit weapon caches and manufacturing sites. It described the strikes as a reply to a breach of the US-brokered ceasefire, which took effect last October after two years of war.
The trigger, it said, was an episode in Rafah, in southern Gaza, where Israeli forces are deployed under the truce. Troops saw eight gunmen come out of a tunnel. Three were killed. A fourth, whom the military called a Hamas commander in the area, was arrested. Dozens of Hamas fighters have been stuck in tunnels under Rafah since the ceasefire began, and some have died in clashes with Israeli troops.
Hamas, which still holds just under half of Gaza, said Israel had broken the truce. It did not say whether any of its members or sites were hit on Jan 31.
A shaky truce
The timing was pointed. The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt was due to reopen the next day under President Donald Trump’s plan to end a war that has left much of Gaza in ruins. That war started when Hamas-led gunmen attacked southern Israel on Oct 7, 2023.
The ceasefire has been shaken again and again. Gaza health officials say Israeli fire has killed over 500 people since it began, most of them civilians. Israeli authorities say Palestinian militants have killed four Israeli soldiers. Each side blames the other for violations, while Washington pushes both toward the next phases of the deal.
Those phases cover hard questions: Hamas disarmament, which the group has long rejected, a further Israeli pullback, and an international peacekeeping force. Israeli officials have warned the war could restart if Hamas does not give up its weapons. Reuters reported on Jan 26 that Hamas wants its 10,000 police officers absorbed into the new US-backed Palestinian administration for Gaza, a demand Israel is likely to oppose.
Sources
Sources
- Israeli airstrikes kill 27 Palestinians in Gaza – IRNA English
- Israeli air strikes kill 27 in Gaza, say Palestinian… | The Straits Times
