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GAZA: The death toll in Gaza from overnight Israeli strikes has climbed to 81, hospital officials said Wednesday, hours after US President Donald Trump said “nothing” would jeopardize the ceasefire agreement he helped broker.
The agency said 22 children were among those killed, as well as women and elderly, and that around 200 people were wounded.
Civil defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal described the situation in Gaza as “catastrophic and terrifying,” calling the strikes “a clear and flagrant violation of the ceasefire agreement.”
“The Israeli strikes targeted tents for displaced people, homes, and the vicinity of a hospital in the Strip,” he told AFP.
Israel began carrying out air strikes on Tuesday after accusing Hamas of attacking Israeli troops in Gaza and violating the truce.
While Israel did not say where its troops were attacked, Hamas has said its fighter had “no connection to the shooting incident in Rafah” and reaffirmed its commitment to the US-brokered ceasefire.
The Israeli army said Wednesday one of its soldiers was killed “during combat in the southern Gaza Strip” a day earlier, and his family had been informed.
Trump defended Israel’s actions on Wednesday, saying it “should hit back,” but added that “nothing’s going to jeopardize” the truce.
“They killed an Israeli soldier. So the Israelis hit back. And they should hit back,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One during his tour of Asia.
US Vice President JD Vance earlier said the ceasefire was holding despite the “skirmishes.”

Hospitals recieve dead and injured
The territory’s main Al-Shifa hospital said one of the strikes hit its backyard. Shifa Hospital Director Mohammed Abu Selmia says the hospital received 21 more bodies killed in the strikes, including seven women and six children.
He said he expects the death toll to rise as many of the 45 wounded that the hospital located in Gaza City took in are in critical condition, among them 20 children.

The new report came as the Israeli military said the ceasefire was back in effect
Al-Awda Hospital said it had received several bodies, including those of four children, killed in the bombing of Gaza’s central Nuseirat refugee camp.
Hamas announced it would delay handing over the body of another hostage, due on Tuesday, saying Israeli “escalation will hinder the search, excavation, and recovery of the bodies.”
Hamas militants had taken 251 people hostage during the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the war.
A row over the last remaining bodies of deceased hostages has threatened to derail the ceasefire agreement.
Israel accuses Hamas of reneging by not returning them, but the Palestinian group says it will take time to locate the remains buried in Gaza’s war-ravaged ruins.
Hamas later said on Telegram it had found the bodies of two hostages on Tuesday, but did not specify when it would hand them over.
Act Decisively
Hamas came under mounting pressure on Monday after it returned the partial remains of a previously recovered captive, which Israel said was a breach of the truce.
Hamas had said the remains were the 16th of 28 hostage bodies it had agreed to return under the ceasefire deal, which came into effect on October 10.
But Israeli forensic examination determined Hamas had in fact handed over partial remains of a hostage whose body had already been brought back to Israel around two years ago, according to Netanyahu’s office.
Israeli government spokeswoman Shosh Bedrosian accused Hamas of staging the discovery of the remains.
“Hamas dug a hole in the ground yesterday, placed the partial remains... inside of it, covered it back up with dirt, and handed it over to the Red Cross,” she told journalists.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum urged the government to “act decisively against these violations” and accused Hamas of knowing the location of the missing hostages.
Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem rejected claims the group knows where the remaining bodies are, arguing that Israel’s bombardment during the two-year war had left locations unrecognizable.
We want to rest
“The movement (Hamas) is determined to hand over the bodies of the Israeli captives as soon as possible once they are located,” he told AFP.
The Palestinian militant group has already returned all 20 living hostages as agreed in the ceasefire deal.
Despite the ceasefire, the toll has continued to climb as more bodies are found under the rubble.
On the ground in Gaza, 60-year-old Abdul-Hayy Al-Hajj Ahmed told AFP he was afraid the war would start again.
“Now they accuse Hamas of stalling, and that is a pretext for renewed escalation and war,” he said.
“We want to rest. I believe the war will come back.”

With Agencies

NEW YORK CITY: A UN human rights investigator said Western nations share responsibility for the devastation in Gaza. She accused them of enabling a “full-fledged genocide” against Palestinians, and warned that the UN itself is becoming “more and more irrelevant.”
Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, presented her latest report to the General Assembly’s Third Committee on Tuesday.
She said that the UN had “failed miserably” to uphold international law and protect civilians in Gaza.
“The United Nations was set up to protect peace and stability, to prevent conflicts, and for a long time it did,” Albanese told Arab News.
“But in Gaza, it has failed miserably … it has failed to enforce international law, which for me as a lawyer is the most serious responsibility.”
The UN had allowed the “near-complete dismantlement of its humanitarian function” in Gaza, she continued, citing in particular the blow suffered by the organization’s agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA. Israel banned the agency from operating in Israel and Palestinian territories in January this year following allegations that a small number of its staff were involved in the Oct. 7 attacks.
“Member states have not been able to contain or isolate the two states creating a threat to peace and security in the region: Israel and the United States,” Albanese said.
“I’m sorry to say this because, of course, I would like to see the United Nations rise and straighten its back and stand solid and principled into the future. But the United Nations is becoming more and more irrelevant, I’m afraid.”
Albanese also criticized world governments for failing to challenge the US over the sanctions it imposed on her in July over her work for the UN investigating human rights abuses in Palestinian territories. The measures hindered her ability to present her latest findings in person.
Speaking to the General Assembly committee via video link from South Africa, she described the sanctions as “unlawful and spiteful” and said the international community “should already have confronted this dangerous precedent.”
She added: “These measures are an assault on the UN itself — on its independence, its integrity, its very soul,” she said.
Asked whether UN officials, including Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, had supported her during this period, Albanese declined to comment.
Her report accuses Western governments of providing military, political and economic support that has sustained Israel’s occupation and military campaign in Gaza.
“Without the direct participation, aid and assistance of other states, the prolonged unlawful Israeli occupation could not have been sustained,” she said.
Israel’s actions in Gaza since October 2023 “have escalated its violence to an unprecedented level,” she continued, and “the ongoing genocide of the Palestinians must be understood as an internationally enabled crime.”
Albanese told the committee: “Many states, primarily Western ones, have facilitated, legitimized and eventually normalized the genocidal campaign perpetrated by Israel.
“By portraying Palestinian civilians as ‘human shields,’ and the broader onslaught in Gaza as a battle of civilization against barbarism, they have reproduced Israeli distortions of international law, and colonial tropes.”
Asked by Arab News whether the crisis threatens “the survival of the UN itself,” Albanese said the situation “is apocalyptic … it’s showing the apocalyptic destruction in Gaza, but also revealing who we are, as individuals, as communities, as states, as organizations.”
Despite her criticisms, Albanese said international law “still has a different story — it allows us to distinguish between wrong and right.” She added that “today, international law is spoken by the masses: against genocide, against apartheid, against Israel’s crimes.”
She urged all governments to “immediately suspend and review all military, diplomatic and economic relations with Israel, as any such engagement could represent means to aid, assist or directly participate in unlawful acts, including war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.”
She warned that “no state can credibly claim adherence to international law while arming, supporting or shielding a genocidal regime.”
Among her recommendations, Albanese called on UN member states to “exert pressure for a complete and permanent ceasefire and full withdrawal of Israeli troops,” to end the siege of Gaza and reopen its airport and port, and to “suspend Israel from the United Nations under Article 6 of the UN Charter.” Article 6 states that a member state that persistently violates the principles of the Charter can be expelled by the General Assembly.
She said: “Complicity in genocide must end. The world is watching Gaza, and the whole of Palestine. States must step up to their responsibilities.”
Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, rejected Albanese’s findings.
“You have tried to curse Israel with lies and hatred but your poison has failed,” he told her during the committee session. “You are a witch and this report is another page in your spell book.
“You wrap your bias in the language of law, hoping it will hide what it really is: Hamas propaganda.”
Special rapporteurs are part of what is known as the special procedures of the UN Human Rights Council. They are independent experts who work on a voluntary basis, are not members of UN staff and are not paid for their work.