At least 91 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded in airstrikes across Gaza on Thursday after Israel resumed bombing and ground operations, the enclave’s health ministry said, effectively ditching a two-month-old ceasefire.

After two months of relative calm, Gazans were again fleeing for their lives after Israel effectively abandoned a ceasefire, launching a new all-out air and ground campaign against Gaza’s dominant Palestinian militant group Hamas, Reuters reported.

Israeli aircraft dropped leaflets on residential neighbourhoods, ordering people out of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun towns in the north, the Shejaia district in Gaza City and towns on the eastern outskirts of Khan Younis in the south.

Late on Thursday, Israel’s military said it had begun ground operations in the Shaboura district of Gaza’s southernmost city Rafah, which abuts the Egyptian border.

“War is back, displacement and death are back, will we survive this round?” said Samed Sami, 29, who fled Shejaia to put up a tent for his family in a camp on open ground.

A day after sending tanks into central Gaza, the Israeli military said on Thursday it had also begun conducting ground operations in the north of the densely populated enclave, along the coastal route in Beit Lahiya.

Hamas, which had not retaliated during the first 48 hours of the renewed Israeli assault, said its fighters fired rockets into Israel. The Israeli military said sirens sounded in the centre of the country after projectiles were launched from Gaza.

Some Gazans said there were no signs yet of preparations by Hamas on the ground to resume fighting. But an official from one militant group allied to Hamas, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters on Thursday that fighters, including from Hamas, had been put on alert awaiting further instructions. Fighters had also been told to stop using mobile phones.

With talks having failed to bridge differences over terms to extend the ceasefire, the military resumed its air assaults on Gaza with a massive bombing campaign on Tuesday before sending soldiers in the day after.

HUNDREDS DEAD

It said on Thursday that its forces had been engaged for the past 24 hours in what it described as an operation to expand a buffer zone separating the northern and southern halves of Gaza, known as the Netzarim corridor.

Israel ordered residents to stay away from the Salahuddin road, Gaza’s main north-south route, and said they should travel along the coast instead.

Tuesday’s first day of resumed airstrikes killed more than 400 Palestinians, one of the deadliest days of the 17-month-old conflict, with scant let-up since then.

In a blow to Hamas as it sought to rebuild its administration in Gaza, this week’s strikes have killed some of its top figures, including the de facto Hamas-appointed head of the Gaza government, the chief of security services, his aide, and the deputy head of the Hamas-run justice ministry.

Hamas said the Israeli ground operation and the incursion into the Netzarim corridor were a “new and dangerous violation” of the ceasefire agreement. In a statement, it reaffirmed its commitment to the deal and called on mediators to “assume their responsibilities”.

For Israel, a return to full-blown war could prove complicated, some current and former Israeli officials say, amid waning public support and burnout among military reservists. Protesters accuse Netanyahu of continuing the war for political reasons and endangering the lives of remaining hostages.

A temporary first phase of the ceasefire ended at the start of this month. Hamas wants to move to an agreed second phase, under which Israel would be required to negotiate an end to the war and withdrawal of its troops from Gaza, and Israeli hostages still held there would be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners.

Israel has offered only a temporary extension of the truce, cut off all supplies to Gaza and said it was restarting its military campaign to force Hamas to free remaining hostages.

The Israeli military said it had intercepted two missiles fired towards Israel from Yemen on Thursday, one in the early hours and the other in the evening. There were no reports of casualties. Iran-aligned Yemeni Houthi forces have occasionally fired missiles at Israel in support of Palestinians in Gaza.

‘WE DON’T WANT DEATH’

The ceasefire had allowed Huda Junaid, her husband and family to return to the site of their destroyed home to camp out in the ruins. But they were now forced to flee again, packing their few remaining belongings into a donkey cart and searching for a new place to pitch their tent near a school.

“We don’t want war, we don’t want death. Enough, we are fed up. There are no longer children in Gaza, all of our children are dead, all of our relatives are dead,” she said.

Speaking to Reuters on Thursday, a Hamas official said mediators had stepped up efforts with the two warring sides but no breakthrough had yet come.

The war began after Hamas militants attacked Israeli communities near the Gaza border in October 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking over 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

More than 49,000 Palestinians have been killed in the ensuing conflict, according to Gaza’s health authorities, with much of the enclave reduced to rubble.

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday he spoke with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the two leaders condemned the resumption of Israeli strikes on Gaza.

Macron said they will co-chair a conference on a two-state solution, aimed at “helping revive a political perspective for both Israelis and Palestinians,” Reuters reported.

“A return to the ceasefire is essential for the release of all hostages and the protection of civilians,” Macron said in a post on X, adding that both leaders discussed the need to work together on the issue of Gaza’s future.

The Israeli military on Wednesday resumed ground operations in central and southern Gaza, as a second day of airstrikes killed at least 48 Palestinians, according to health workers in the coastal strip.

The renewed ground operations came a day after more than 400 Palestinians were killed in airstrikes in one of the deadliest episodes since the beginning of the conflict in October 2023, shattering a ceasefire that has largely held since January.

Separately, Macron welcomed the crown prince’s Jeddah initiative, which enabled the start of peace negotiations in Ukraine.

The leaders also discussed Syria and Lebanon.

“France and Saudi Arabia share the same objectives: a fully sovereign Lebanon and a united, stable Syria engaged in an inclusive transition,” Macron said.

Israeli air strikes in Gaza killed at least 200 people, Palestinian health authorities said, as attacks hit dozens of targets early on Tuesday, ending a weeks-long standoff over extending the ceasefire that halted fighting in January.

The Palestinian militant group Hamas issued a statement accusing Israel of breaching the ceasefire.

Strikes were reported in multiple locations, including northern Gaza, Gaza City and the Deir al-Balah, Khan Younis and Rafah in central and southern Gaza Strip. Palestinian health ministry officials said many of the dead were children.

The Israeli military, which said it hit dozens of targets, said the strikes would continue for as long as necessary and would extend beyond air strikes, raising the prospect that Israeli ground troops could resume fighting.

The attacks were far wider in scale than the regular series of drone strikes the Israeli military has said it has conducted against individuals or small groups of suspected militants and follows weeks of failed efforts to agree an extension to the truce agreed on January 19.

In hospitals strained by 15 months of bombardment, piles of bodies in white plastic sheets smeared with blood could be seen stacked up as casualties were brought in.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said its teams dealt with 86 killed and 134 wounded, but others were brought to overwhelmed hospitals by private cars.

Officials from Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, Al-Aqsa Hospital in the central Gaza Strip and Al-Ahly Hospital in Gaza City, which have all been extensively damaged in the war, said that altogether they had received around 85 dead. Authorities also reported separately that 16 members of one family in Rafah, in southern Gaza had been killed.

A spokesperson for the Gaza health ministry said the death toll was at least 200.

Hamas said Israel had overturned the ceasefire agreement, leaving the fate of 59 hostages still held in Gaza uncertain.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office accused Hamas of “repeated refusal to release our hostages” and rejecting proposals from U.S. President Donald Trump’s Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff.

“Israel will, from now on, act against Hamas with increasing military strength,” it said in a statement.

In Washington, a White House spokesperson said Israel had consulted the U.S. administration before it carried out the strikes, which the military said targeted mid-level Hamas commanders and leadership officials as well as infrastructure belonging to the militant group.

“Hamas could have released hostages to extend the ceasefire but instead chose refusal and war,” White House spokesperson Brian Hughes said.

In Gaza, witnesses contacted by Reuters said Israeli tanks shelled areas in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, forcing many families who had returned to their areas after the ceasefire began to leave their homes and head north to Khan Younis.

Negotiating teams from Israel and Hamas had been in Doha as mediators from Egypt and Qatar sought to bridge the gap between the two sides after the end of an initial phase in the ceasefire, which saw 33 Israeli hostages and five Thais returned by militant groups in Gaza in exchange for some 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.

With the backing of the United States, Israel had been pressing for the return of the remaining 59 hostages still held in Gaza in exchange for a longer-term truce that would have halted fighting until after the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan and the Jewish Passover holiday in April.

However Hamas had been insisting on moving to negotiations for a permanent end to the war and a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, in accordance with the terms of the original ceasefire agreement.

“We demand that the mediators hold Netanyahu and the Zionist occupation fully responsible for violating and overturning the agreement,” the group said.

Each side has accused the other of failing to respect the terms of the January ceasefire agreement, and there were multiple hiccups during the course of the first phase. But until now, a full return to the fighting had been avoided.

Israel had blocked deliveries of aid from entering Gaza and had threatened on numerous occasions to resume fighting if Hamas did not agree to return the hostages it still holds.

The army did not provide details about the strikes carried out in the early hours of Tuesday but Palestinian health authorities and witnesses contacted by Reuters reported damage in numerous areas of Gaza, where hundreds of thousands are living in makeshift shelters or damaged buildings.

A building in Gaza City, in the northern end of the strip was hit and at least three houses were hit in Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza. In addition, the strikes hit targets in the southern cities of Khan Younis and Rafah, according to medics and witnesses.

Among those killed was senior Hamas official Mohammad Al-Jmasi, a member of the political office, and members of his family, including his grandchildren who were in his house in Gaza City when it was hit by an airstrike, Hamas sources and relatives said. In all, at least five senior Hamas officials were killed along with members of their families.

Much of Gaza now lies in ruins after 15 months of fighting, which erupted on October 7, 2023 when thousands of Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israeli communities around the Gaza Strip, killing some 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies, and abducting 251 hostages into Gaza.

The Israeli campaign in response has killed more than 48,000 people, according to Palestinian health authorities, and destroyed much of the housing and infrastructure in the enclave, including the hospital system.