Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday he has ordered the military to instantly perform “powerful strikes” in Gaza, and Hamas responded by saying it could delay handing over the body of a hostage, putting recent pressure on the tenuous U.S.-brokered ceasefire.
The order from Netanyahu follows heightened tensions, as Israel reported Hamas firing on its forces in southern Gaza and after Hamas returned a set of stays that Israel said belonged to a hostage recovered earlier within the war.
Netanyahu called the return a “clear violation” of the ceasefire agreement, which requires Hamas to return all Israeli hostage stays as soon as possible.
In one other sign of the fragility of the ceasefire, Israeli troops were shot at within the southern city of Rafah on Tuesday and returned fire, in keeping with an Israeli military official who spoke on condition of anonymity because there hasn’t been an official announcement yet.
The ceasefire that began on Oct. 10 has largely held despite a minimum of two previous flareups in violence.
On Oct. 19, Israel said two Israeli soldiers were killed by Hamas fire. Israel responded with a series of strikes that killed over 40 Palestinians, in keeping with local health officials. And over the weekend, Israel carried out an airstrike against what it said were Islamic Jihad militants planning an attack, wounding several people.
There are still 13 bodies of hostages in Gaza. Hamas said Tuesday it had recovered the body of a hostage, but after Israeli announced the plans to strike Gaza, Hamas said it in an announcement it could delay the handover.
An Associated Press videographer in Khan Younis witnessed what gave the impression to be a white body bag being carried out from a tunnel by several men, including some masked militants, after which transported into an ambulance. It was not immediately clear what was within the bag.
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The slow return of hostages’ bodies is posing a challenge to implementing the subsequent stages of the ceasefire, which is able to address even knottier issues, comparable to the disarmament of Hamas, the deployment of a global security force in Gaza and deciding who will govern the territory.
Hamas has said it’s struggling to locate the bodies amid the vast destruction in Gaza, while Israel has accused the militant group of purposely delaying their return. Over the weekend, Egypt deployed a team of experts and heavy equipment to assist seek for the bodies of the remaining hostages. That work continued Tuesday in Khan Younis and Nuseirat.
That is the second time for the reason that ceasefire began on Oct. 10 that is still turned over by Hamas have been problematic. Israel said one in every of the bodies Hamas released in the primary week of the ceasefire belonged to an unidentified Palestinian.
During a previous ceasefire in February 2025, Hamas said it handed over the bodies of three hostages, Shiri Bibas and her two sons, but testing showed that one in every of the bodies returned was identified as a Palestinian woman. Shiri Bibas’ body was returned a day later.
The stays returned overnight have been identified as belonging to Ofir Tzarfati, Netanyahu’s office said.
Tzarfati was kidnapped from the Nova music festival within the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel that began the war. In all, the militants killed some 1,200 those that day, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages.
Tzarfati was killed in captivity and his body was retrieved by Israeli troops in November 2023. In March 2024, his family received additional stays for burial.
Tzarfati’s family said in an announcement that that is the third time “we’ve got been forced to open Ofir’s grave and rebury our son.”
In exchange for 15 dead hostages returned from Gaza for the reason that ceasefire began, Israel has handed back to Gaza 195 Palestinian bodies. The last 20 living hostages were returned to Israel firstly of the ceasefire, and in exchange, Israel freed roughly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.
Israel kills 3 Palestinians in a West Bank raid
Earlier Tuesday, Israeli authorities said they’d killed three Palestinian militants early during an operation within the northern a part of the occupied West Bank, the newest motion in Israel’s stepped-up military activity within the territory for the reason that Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack.
Israeli police said the three men were shot as they got here out of a cave near Jenin, a town within the northern West Bank referred to as a militant stronghold. The Israeli military said in an announcement that the militants “took part in terror activity in Jenin,” but gave no further details.
Two militants were shot and killed within the initial volley of gunfire. The third, who was wounded, was killed shortly after, in keeping with the Israeli military.
An earlier statement said the Israeli military carried out an airstrike shortly afterward to destroy the cave. The military confirmed an airstrike in the world but gave no further details.
Hamas condemned the Jenin strike and later identified two of the three men as militants with Hamas’ Qassam Brigades. The third man was known as a “comrade,” but no additional details about him got.
Israel says its operations have cracked down on militants within the West Bank. But Palestinians and human rights groups say scores of uninvolved civilians have also been among the many dead, while tens of hundreds of individuals have been displaced from their homes.
Over 68,500 Palestinians have died within the two-year war in Gaza, in keeping with Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. The ministry maintains detailed casualty records which are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. Israel has disputed them without providing its own toll.
Associated Press writers Josef Federman and Renata Brito in Jerusalem and Menelaos Hadjicostis in Nicosia, Cyprus, contributed to this report.
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