Israeli strikes across Gaza hit multiple homes, killing at least 85 Palestinians

It also announced an additional ground operation in northern Gaza near the already largely destroyed town of Beit Lahiya, where strikes have killed dozens over the past 24 hours.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians returned to what remains of their homes in the north after a ceasefire took hold in January. Israel resumed heavy strikes across Gaza on Tuesday, shattering the truce that had facilitated the release of more than two dozen hostages.

Israel blamed the renewed fighting on Hamas because the militant group rejected a new proposal that departed from their signed agreement. The Trump administration, which took credit for helping to broker the ceasefire, has voiced full support for Israel.

More than 400 Palestinians were killed on Tuesday alone, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

The military said three rockets were fired out of Gaza on Thursday, with one intercepted and two falling in open areas. Hamas claimed the attack and said it had targeted Tel Aviv.

The military said it intercepted two missiles launched several hours apart by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels. Both were intercepted before reaching Israeli airspace, the military said. Air raid sirens rang out overnight and exploding interceptors were heard in Jerusalem. No injuries were reported. It was the third such attack since the United States began a new campaign of airstrikes against the rebels earlier this week.

One of the strikes on Gaza early Thursday hit the Abu Daqa family’s home in Abasan al-Kabira, a village just outside of Khan Younis near the border with Israel.

The strike killed at least 16 people, mostly women and children, according to the nearby European Hospital, which received the dead. Those killed included a father and his seven children, as well as the parents and brother of a month-old baby who survived along with her grandparents.

Israel’s military said Thursday that it killed the head of Hamas’ internal security apparatus in an airstrike in Gaza, where Israel says it has struck dozens of militant targets.

The White House reiterated its support for Israel on Thursday.

“The president made it very clear to Hamas that if they did not release all of the hostages there would be all hell to pay,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

Hundreds of Israelis gathered outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem on Thursday to protest his handling of the hostage crisis and his plan to fire the country’s head of internal security.

The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostage. Most of the hostages have been freed in ceasefire agreements or other deals. Israeli forces have rescued eight living hostages and recovered the bodies of dozens more.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive, among the deadliest and most destructive in recent history, has killed more than 49,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. It does not say how many were militants, but says more than half of those killed were women and children. Israel says it has killed around 20,000 militants, without providing evidence.

On Wednesday, Israeli ground troops advanced in Gaza for the first time since the ceasefire took hold in January, seizing part of a corridor separating the northern third of the territory from the south.

Israel, which has also cut off the supply of food, fuel and humanitarian aid to Gaza’s roughly 2 million Palestinians, has vowed to intensify its operations until Hamas releases the 59 hostages it holds — 35 of whom are believed dead — and gives up control of the territory.

Hamas has said it will only release the remaining hostages in exchange for a lasting ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, as called for in the ceasefire agreement they reached in January after more than a year of mediation by the United States, Egypt and Qatar.

short sidebar, please use a headline and photo: Month-old baby found alive in rubble

As rescuers dug through the remains of a collapsed apartment building in Gaza’s Khan Younis on Thursday, they could hear the cries of a baby from underneath the rubble.

Suddenly, calls of “God is great” rang out. A man sprinted away from the wreckage carrying a living infant swaddled in a blanket and handed her to a waiting ambulance crew. The baby girl stirred fitfully as paramedics checked her over.

Her parents and brother were dead in the overnight Israeli airstrike.

“When we asked people, they said she is a month old and she has been under the rubble, since dawn,” said Hazen Attar, a civil defense first responder. “She had been screaming and then falling silent from time to time until we were able to get her out a short while ago, and thank God she is safe.”

The girl was identified as Ella Osama Abu Dagga. She had been born 25 days earlier, in the midst of a tenuous ceasefire that many Palestinians in Gaza had hoped would mark the end of a war that has devastated the enclave, killed tens of thousands and displaced nearly its entire population.

Only the girl’s grandparents survived the attack. Killed were her brother, mother and father, along with another family that included a father and his seven children. Rescuers digging through the rubble could be seen pulling out the small body of a child sprawled on the mattress where he had been sleeping.

The Associated Press

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