There was widespread jubilation in Gaza after news of the ceasefire agreement, but residents woke up Thursday to smoke, debris and more deaths following new Israeli air strikes.
“We were waiting for the ceasefire and were happy. It was the happiest night since October 7,” said Gaza resident Saeed Alloush, referring to the Hamas attack on Israel.
His uncle Alloush said, “Suddenly…we got the news of the martyrdom of 40 people.”
“The happiness of the entire area turned to sadness, as if an earthquake had occurred.”
The latest attacks came after Qatar and the United States announced a fragile ceasefire agreement, which is due to take effect on Sunday.
AFP has contacted the Israeli military for comment.
Gaza’s civil protection agency spokesman Mahmoud Bassal told AFP on Thursday that at least 73 people had been killed in Israeli air strikes since Wednesday’s announcement.
Among them were 20 children and 25 women, he said, while about 200 others were injured.
As day broke, crowds gathered to inspect and clean up the remains of the ruined building, where chunks of concrete, rebar and personal belongings lay strewn about.
The scenes mirror those in other parts of the densely populated region of 2.4 million people, most of whom have been displaced at least once since the war began in October 2023.
At Nasser Hospital, the main medical facility in the southern city of Khan Younis, AFP journalists saw metal morgue stretchers painted red as workers drained the blood of the strike dead from them.
At al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City, where many of the victims were killed in the attack, bereaved families draped white shrouds over the bodies of their loved ones.
“After the ceasefire was announced and people were cheering and rejoicing, a five-storey building was targeted, which housed more than 50 people,” rescue worker Ibrahim Abu al-Rish told AFP.
Wearing headlights, first responders and local residents searched the wrecked streets of Gaza City late at night.
Abu al-Rish, an ambulance driver with Gaza’s Civil Protection Agency, said on Thursday that “the shelling is still continuing, hitting houses one after another”.
‘A very bloody night’
At the al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, resident Mahmoud al-Qarnawi told AFP that Gazans will remain unsafe until an agreement is reached.
“The shooting has not stopped, the planes are still in the air and the situation is difficult,” he said.
As a result, Karnawi and others AFP spoke to in the nearby town of Nussirat said they were worried about what might happen next.
“We must remain vigilant. And for the next three days, we fear (potential) bloodshed (worse) than before,” Motaz Baker, displaced from Gaza, said from the market in Nusirat.
International medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said no one could yet feel safe in Gaza.
“Last night there was a lot of excitement for 20 minutes, and then it was a very bloody night,” MSF emergency coordinator Amande Bezzerole told AFP by phone from the area. The sounds of gunfire could be heard in the background.
The Israeli Cabinet is expected to approve the Gaza agreement later on Thursday, although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has accused Hamas of withdrawing from elements of the agreement.
Key mediators Qatar and the United States said on Wednesday that Israel and Hamas had agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza from Sunday, along with an exchange of hostages and prisoners.
Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani said that if the delicate deal is approved, the first phase should see the release of 33 hostages.
The war in Gaza was sparked by a Hamas offensive, which resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive in Gaza has killed 46,788 people, most of them civilians, according to health ministry figures in the Hamas-run territory considered reliable by the United Nations.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
