For almost 60 days, Gazans did not have to count the new dead as a fragile truce between Israel and Hamas. The hostages and prisoners have been released, food and supplies returned to the markets, and people made their way through the ruins they had called to the house.
Tuesday, after weeks of unsuccessful talks to extend the ceasefire, Israeli warplanes bombed cities from top to bottom of the Gaza strip, and the count has started again.
More than 400 people have been killed in strikes, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, whose figures do not distinguish civilians and combatants. Among the dead, there were 130 children, said the United Nations Children’s Fund, noting that some of the air strikes hit shelters where families were sleeping.
After weeks of relative calm, Tuesday’s attacks seemed to take many Gazans off guard, including those who had returned to battered neighborhoods and rose together in narrow neighborhoods. The result was one of the deadliest tolls of a day of the whole war, which started with the attack led by Hamas in 2023 against Israel during which around 1,200 people were killed and 250 removed.
The Israeli military response devastated Gaza, killing tens of thousands of people, moving millions and flattening cities. Day after day, month after month, the survivors looked for the injured and the dead.
They would do it again in the hours that followed the last air strikes of Israel on Tuesday, which started before dawn on Tuesday.
The office of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, said that he had ordered strikes after Hamas’ “repeated refusal” to release the 59 hostages still detained in Gaza. Less than half would be alive.
In an address, Mr. Netanyahu suggested that Israel would continue to launch tandem strikes with negotiations with Hamas. “This is only the start,” he said.
After the strikes, some went to Morgues to identify the missing parents. Others wrapped bodies in shrouds and rushed to bury them. During a large part of the war, the traditions of death such as funeral processions and mourning tents had themselves become too dangerous to perform.
Many deaths have been buried in common graves, lessons and backwards, prayers were quickly and under cover, rather than under the open sky.
With only a few of the Gaza hospitals that still work, survivors tried to administer any treatment to the injured.
The dead and the injured include a large number of children, say the humanitarian workers. And while some seriously injured children have left Gaza for medical care abroad, border passages are now closed. The injured during this week’s attacks can only ask for help within the territory.
More than 48,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, according to local officials. The Palestinians cried in the places they can, often outside the hospitals or by the wreckage of their homes.
The Israeli army said on Tuesday that it had struck sites and individuals affiliated with Hamas and another militant group, the Palestinian Islamic jihad, through the enclave.
Hamas quickly reappeared in public after the end of the ceasefire, seeking to show its domination over Gaza and organize elaborate hostage liberation ceremonies that have exasperated the Israelis. In addition to Mr. Netanyahu’s assertion on Hamas’ refusal to release hostages, the Israeli army said that it had struck Gaza to prevent the attacks on the Israelis.
During the strikes on the shelters, Israel said that activists used them as the basis and that he is trying to minimize the damage to civilians. On Tuesday, the soldiers struck at least one tent to house people displaced to Khan Younis, a city in the south of Gazan where thousands of people had fled.
The first phase of the ceasefire ended on March 1, and although neither Israel nor Hamas immediately resumed fighting, the Israeli government began to increase its pressure on the Gazans.
Food and fuel are rare again. The scalpers sell bread for three times the original price, and there is no more petrol that arrives for generators, ambulances or something else.
The Israeli army has issued new evacuation orders, warning the Palestinians of the districts subject to strikes. The families waiting for them did the packaging on Tuesday, taking everything they could.
With donkeys pulling carts, the Palestinians who had only returned a few weeks ago to Beit Hanoun, north of Gaza, left again. Israel ordered evacuations in the region on Wednesday, warning residents of what he called “combat zones”.
Israel progressed more deeply in Gaza on Wednesday, saying that its soldiers had grasped parts of a major corridor separating the northern half from the southern enclave. The army said that its objective was to create a “partial buffer zone” there.
Some wells still work in the center of Gaza, but they only provide brackish water, which could cause long -term health problems, warn humanitarian workers. The Israeli Energy Minister suggested that Water could soon be cut. His foreign ministry argues that the territory has received sufficient aid and that Hamas operates expeditions.
Gaza has little electricity since the first days of war, when Israel cut sources in its initial response to the attack on Hamas in 2023. For months, Gazans lived in breakdown conditions, the essential services of the territory based on solar panels and generators.
After another series of attacks, the panels have become more precious than ever.
But solar panels can only do a lot. Many gasans remain in the dark.
