Over 400 Gazans killed in brazen Israeli attacks

Israeli airstrikes pounded Gaza and killed more than 400 people, Palestinian health authorities said on Tuesday, in an onslaught that ended weeks of relative calm after talks to secure a permanent ceasefire stalled.

Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas each accused the other of breaching the truce, which had broadly held since January, offering respite from war for the 2.3 million inhabitants of Gaza, where most buildings have been reduced to rubble.

Hamas, which still holds 59 of the 250 or so hostages Israel says the group seized in its October 7, 2023 attack, accused Israel of jeopardising efforts by mediators to negotiate a permanent deal to end the fighting, but the group made no threat of retaliation.

Netanyahu said earlier he ordered strikes because Hamas had rejected proposals to secure a ceasefire extension, and pledged to step up military action. The strikes hit houses and tent encampments from the north to the south of the Gaza Strip, and Israeli tanks shelled from across the border line, witnesses said.

Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry said 404 people had been killed in one of the biggest single-day tolls since the war erupted. "It was a night of hell. It felt like the first days of the war," said Rabiha Jamal, 65, a mother-of-five from Gaza City.

Evacuation orders

Families in Beit Hanoun, in the northern Gaza Strip, and eastern areas of Khan Younis in the south fled their homes, some on foot, others in cars or rickshaws, carrying some of their belongings after the Israeli military issued evacuation orders

warning the areas were "dangerous combat zones".

Egypt and Qatar, mediators in the ceasefire deal along with the US, condemned the Israeli assault, while the European Union said in a statement it deplored the breakdown of the ceasefire.

"The EU calls on Israel to end its military operations and reiterates its call on Hamas to release all the hostages immediately," the statement from EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, and Commissioners Dubravka Suica and Hadja Labib, said.

The UN emergency relief coordinator, Tom Fletcher, said the "modest gains" made during the ceasefire had been destroyed. Israel has halted aid deliveries into Gaza for more than two weeks, exacerbating a humanitarian crisis. However, Dorothy Shea, acting US ambassador to the United Nations, said the blame for the resumption of Gaza hostilities "lies solely with Hamas" and expressed support for Israel in its next steps. Reuters