Smoke billows from buildings in Rafah following an Israeli air raid on the southern Gaza Strip metropolis on Friday, as combating resumed shortly after the a week-long truce between Israel and Hamas fell aside.

Said Khatib/AFP through Getty Images

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Said Khatib/AFP through Getty Images

Smoke billows from buildings in Rafah following an Israeli air raid on the southern Gaza Strip metropolis on Friday, as combating resumed shortly after the a week-long truce between Israel and Hamas fell aside.

Said Khatib/AFP through Getty Images

TEL AVIV, Israel — Israel’s warplanes started pounding targets in Gaza early Friday, shortly after the collapse of a cease-fire deal that had allowed the discharge of greater than 100 hostages seized by Hamas militants and a whole lot of Palestinians from Israeli jails.

Airstrikes in Rafah, close to the Egyptian border, started simply after 7 a.m. native time (midnight ET), with one hitting an house constructing close to an open market. However, the total scope of the renewed bombardment was not instantly clear. A spokesman for the Gaza well being ministry within the Hamas-controlled territory mentioned that greater than 30 Palestinians had been killed within the opening hours of renewed battle.

The finish of the truce and the resumption of combating got here hours after a seventh hostages-for-prisoners alternate between the 2 sides, and simply as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was leaving Israel after high-level conferences, together with with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Blinken had pressed Israel to additional prolong the non permanent truce.

Israel’s army mentioned it was restarting fight operations as a result of Hamas “violated the operational pause…and fired toward Israeli territory.” Netanyahu’s workplace added that Hamas “did not live up to its duty to release all the kidnapped women today, and launched rockets at the citizens of Israel.”

“With the return to fighting we will emphasize: the Israeli government is committed to achieving the goals of the war — to release our hostages, eliminate Hamas and ensure that Gaza will never again pose a threat to the residents of Israel,” the prime minister’s workplace mentioned.

The non permanent cease-fire, which started per week in the past, got here after weeks of heavy bombardment by Israeli air and floor forces in response to an Oct. 7 Hamas assault on southern Israel that killed 1,200 folks, Israel says. Some 240 hostages, together with Israelis and a lot of overseas employees, had been additionally seized from communities bordering Gaza.

Members of Hamas’ political bureau, issued an announcement saying: “What Israel did not achieve during the fifty days before the truce, it will not achieve by continuing its aggression after the truce.” Osama Hamden, a senior Beirut-based Hamas official, informed NPR that the Islamist militant group “tried till the very last minutes to negotiate an extension of the truce, but the (Israel) was not interested in that, and only interested in continuing its aggression on the Palestinian people.”

Palestinians examine the destruction following an Israeli air strike on the Rafah refugee camp within the southern Gaza Strip on December 1, 2023.

MOHAMMED ABED/AFP through Getty Images

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Palestinians examine the destruction following an Israeli air strike on the Rafah refugee camp within the southern Gaza Strip on December 1, 2023.

MOHAMMED ABED/AFP through Getty Images

After hostilities resumed, Israel’s army issued a warning to Gazans that “Hamas uses the residents of the Gaza Strip as human shields, placing its command and military infrastructure in residential areas, hospitals, mosques, and schools.”

“Hamas turns civilian sites into military targets while using civilians and civilian facilities as a human shield,” the army mentioned, issuing what it mentioned was an interactive evacuation map for residents that divides the territory into “recognizable areas to enable the residents of Gaza to orient themselves and understand the instructions, and to evacuate from specific places for their safety if required.”

During the week-long pause in combating, Hamas and different militants in Gaza launched greater than 100 hostages, most of them Israelis, in return for 240 Palestinians free of prisons in Israel.

The truce additionally allowed desperately wanted humanitarian help to achieve besieged Gaza, whose 2.2 million folks had been beneath weeks of bombardment from Israeli airstrikes and a floor marketing campaign that has killed at the least 13,300 folks, based on Gaza’s well being ministry.

The authentic four-day cease-fire deal that started per week in the past was twice prolonged for a complete of three days to permit for the alternate of extra captives. Israel had agreed to delay the truce if Hamas turned over a further ten hostages per day in alternate for 30 Palestinians. But on Thursday, within the last alternate beneath the extension, Hamas launched solely eight captives.

NPR’s Scott Neuman, Daniel Estrin and Brian Mann reported from Tel Aviv. NPR’s Anas Baba reported from Rafah, Gaza Strip.