The temporary ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas collapsed on Friday morning after a week as both parties confirmed that hostilities had resumed. Israeli warplanes hit targets in the Gaza Strip, killing 32 people, while rocket warning sirens blared in southern Israel, according to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in the Palestinian territory.
About an hour before the ceasefire expired at 7 a.m. local time (Midnight Eastern), the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said The country’s missile defense system detected and intercepted a rocket fired from Gaza into Israeli territory.
“Hamas violated the pause in operations and also fired into Israeli territory,” the IDF said in a social media post. “The IDF has resumed the fight against the terrorist organization Hamas in the Gaza Strip.”
A photo taken from southern Israel near the Gaza Strip border shows smoke rising from buildings in Gaza after they were hit by Israeli strikes, as fighting resumes between Israel and Hamas militants on December 1, 2023. JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty
The government of Qatar, where negotiations have been underway for weeks and the terms of the ceasefire have been agreed, expressed “deep regret” at the resumption of hostilities. It said: “Negotiations between the two sides will continue with the aim of returning to a pause.”
Click here to view related media.
Click to expand
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday in his third visit to Israel since the war began and urged Israel to protect civilians in Gaza.
“Israel has one of the most advanced militaries in the world,” Blinken told reporters. “It is capable of neutralizing the threat posed by Hamas while minimizing harm to innocent men, women and children. And she has an obligation to do so.”
“Back to the nightmarish situation” in Gaza
After a strike in the southern Gaza town of Rafah on Friday, CBS News’ Marwan al-Ghoul found a boy crying at the scene.
“We went there and got water to wash our clothes. The bombardment started and the stones started flying towards us,” teenager Omar Hahrous told CBS News. “I looked around and couldn’t find anyone. Some were injured… others were martyred.”
Palestinian teenager Omar Hahrous speaks to CBS News at the site of an Israeli airstrike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Dec. 1, 2023, immediately after the collapse of a temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. CBS News
The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which helped release hostages and prisoners during the ceasefire, told the French news agency AFP on Friday that the resumption of hostilities would send Gaza’s roughly 2.3 million people “back into the nightmare.” “ brought the situation in which they found themselves before the ceasefire.
“People are at a breaking point, hospitals are at a breaking point, the entire Gaza Strip is in a very precarious state,” Mardini told AFP in Dubai, where he was attending the UN climate summit COP28.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, meanwhile, called the resumption of hostilities “catastrophic” and called on “all parties and states with influence to immediately redouble their efforts to ensure a ceasefire – on humanitarian and human rights grounds. “”
Palestinian teenager Omar Hahrous speaks to CBS News at the site of an Israeli airstrike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Dec. 1, 2023, immediately after the collapse of a temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. CBS News
Hamas said negotiations took place throughout the night to agree to a third extension of the pause in fighting, and it made offers including the return of the bodies of a mother and her two young children who were among the hostages seized by Hamas group during their unprecedented terrorist attack on October 7th.
“The occupation refused to respond to all of these offers because it made a predisposed decision to resume criminal aggression,” Hamas claimed in a statement, assigning “full responsibility” to the Biden administration for resuming the war its “absolute security” to support Israel.
Air raid sirens were heard in southern Israel on Friday morning, and schools in central Israel were ordered not to open unless they had bomb shelters. Otherwise, classes should take place remotely.
UNICEF on Gaza: If the fighting continues, the nightmare for the children will continue
Attack in Jerusalem, violence in the West Bank
The fragile deal has been marred by several violent incidents this week, including a shootout early Thursday morning in which two gunmen opened fire on a crowded bus stop in Jerusalem, killing at least three Israelis and wounding six others. Blinken confirmed that two of the wounded were also US citizens. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.
“The terrorists just got out of the cars and started shooting right at the faces of normal people,” paramedic Israel Polak, who was at the scene, told CBS News.
Hamas said the shooting was in response to the killing of children in the Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin. Two boys, ages 8 and 15, were fatally shot in the camp on Wednesday.
The last hostages released under the ceasefire
The ceasefire began on November 24 and was extended twice. More than 100 hostages held by Hamas were released during this time, along with approximately 240 Palestinian prisoners. On Thursday, the seventh and final day of the lull in fighting, eight Israeli hostages from Gaza and 30 Palestinians from Israeli prisons were released.
The Israeli hostages released on Thursday were aged between 17 and 41 and included several dual nationals.
Among them were siblings Aisha and Bilal Ziyadne, aged 17 and 18, who were abducted from Kibbutz Holit, where they went to work with their father Yousef and older brother Hamza, according to a spokesman for the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. Her father and older brother are still held captive by Hamas, the spokesman said.
Hamas releases six more hostages on the 7th day of the ceasefire
Also released was 21-year-old Mia Schem, a French-Israeli woman who appeared in a propaganda video released by Hamas in October and appeared to have her right arm injured. Her aunt told Israeli media on Thursday that the operation was carried out by a Palestinian veterinarian.
Her mother, Karen Schem, told CBS News at the time: “It’s very hard to see my daughter, I see the pain, I see that she’s in physical pain.”
According to the Israeli military, more than 1,200 people, most of them civilians, were killed by Hamas militants in their rampage in southern Israel on October 7. The group has long been designated a terrorist organization by the United States, Israel and many other nations.
The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry says nearly 15,000 people have been killed in Gaza by Israeli retaliation and airstrikes.
—Tucker Reals, Emily Mae Czachor, Chris Livesay and Holly Williams contributed to this report.
Israel and Hamas at war
More More Faris Tanyos