The two sides in the Gaza conflict have picked up where they left off, amid rocket fire from Gaza and Israeli air strikes – leaving a 10-day period of calm in ruins.
With hostilities resumed, Hamas says Israel’s bombing of a house in Gaza City late on Tuesday was a bid to assassinate its military commander but that his wife and infant child were killed.
The fate of Mohammed Deif himself, blamed by Israel for past suicide attacks and for masterminding the current Hamas military campaign, is not known.
Gaza officials say that at least 19 Palestinians have been killed and 120 injured since fighting restarted on Tuesday.
“As you can see, there is terrible destruction,” said Raafat Madi, a resident of Rafah, after an Israeli air strike there.
“It is like an earthquake struck the area with damage everywhere. All the people affected are civilians… they are humiliated and are not to blame for anything.”
Accusing Hamas of breaking the latest truce with rocket fire eight hours before the ceasefire had expired, Israel recalled its delegation from talks in Cairo.
Egypt has urged both sides to resume the negotiations but today they seem further apart than ever.
The Palestinian Health Ministry says 2,029 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the conflict began. Israel says it has killed hundreds of Palestinian militants in fighting that the United Nations says has displaced about 425,000 people in the territory of 1.8 million.
Sixty-four Israeli soldiers and three civilians in Israel have also been killed.
