Deadliest day in Gaza since ceasefire

By Abeer Salman, Jeremy Diamond and Oren Liebermann, CNN

Jerusalem (CNN) — Israeli strikes in Gaza killed at least 104 people, including dozens of children, the enclave’s health authorities said on Wednesday, marking the deadliest day since the beginning of the ceasefire championed by US President Donald Trump.

The strikes came Tuesday night after Israel accused Hamas of killing a soldier and staging the discovery of a deceased hostage.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed the military to carry out “immediate, powerful strikes in the Gaza Strip,” his office said in a short statement. The US was notified of the decision to carry out strikes in Gaza, a US official told CNN.

The military said Wednesday it will resume the ceasefire but will continue to “respond forcefully to any violation.”

Hamas denounced what it called the “criminal bombardment” by Israel, which it said violated the ceasefire agreement. It also denied attacking Israeli soldiers and reaffirmed its commitment to the truce.

At least 104 people were killed in the strikes across Gaza overnight Tuesday, according to the Ministry of Health in the battered enclave. These include at least 46 children and 20 women, the ministry said.

The director of Al-Shifa Hospital described the health and humanitarian situation as “catastrophic.”

“There are no medicines or medical supplies to treat the wounded and the sick.” Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya told CNN.

The Israeli military named the soldier killed as Master Sergeant Yona Efraim Feldbaum, aged 37, from the settlement of Zayit Raanan in the occupied West Bank. A member of the Combat Engineering Corps in the Gaza Division, Feldbaum died durning combat in southern Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said.

A military official said Hamas had attacked Israeli troops east of the so-called yellow line, which separates Israeli-occupied Gaza from the remainder of the territory. The troops, in the Rafah area of southern Gaza, had come under RPG and sniper fire, the official said.

CNN has reached out to the IDF for comment on the strikes.

US President Donald Trump said it was his understanding that “they killed an Israeli soldier,” without naming Hamas.

“So the Israelis hit back,” he told reporters on Air Force One on his way to South Korea, speaking before the reports of dozens of casualties from the Israeli strikes had emerged.

“Nothing’s going to jeopardize” the ceasefire, he added, repeating threats that Hamas would be “terminated.”

Earlier Tuesday, Netanyahu’s office said that Hamas was in “clear violation” of the Gaza ceasefire agreement after returning remains to Israel that did not belong to any of the 13 hostages still unaccounted for in the enclave.

An Israeli official told CNN that among the options being considered are expanding the so-called yellow line – Israel’s withdrawal line in Gaza – reoccupying additional territory, or retaking the Netzarim corridor, which cuts across Gaza.

Another Israeli source told CNN that any response would be coordinated with the US, adding that Israel was also considering restricting the flow of humanitarian aid, but Washington opposes such a step.

Israel says Hamas staged discovery

The Israeli military also released a drone video on Tuesday that it said shows Hamas operatives burying a white cloth containing a body in Gaza City and then staging its discovery in front of the Red Cross.

In the nearly 15-minute clip, three men are seen dragging a white shroud into a bulldozed plot of land near a building and covering the shroud with dirt. After the shroud is completely covered, a bulldozer scoops up the dirt and drops it into a nearby pile. Moments later, Red Cross officials arrive on the scene as the shroud containing the body is pulled from the dirt. With the Red Cross standing nearby, the video shows the white cloth being buried and uncovered once again as someone with a cell phone appears to take a video of the scene.

The military said the video showed that Hamas “is attempting to create a false impression of efforts to locate the bodies” of the remaining deceased hostages. CNN cannot independently verify the video or the identities of the individuals in it.

The Red Cross said that its team was “not aware that a deceased person had been placed there prior to their arrival, as seen in the footage.”

“It is unacceptable that a fake recovery was staged, when so much depends on this agreement being upheld and when so many families are still anxiously awaiting news of their loved ones,” the Red Cross said in a statement.

The organization said that it had agreed to operate as an intermediary “in good faith” and noted that the situation in Gaza is “exceedingly challenging to work in.”

CNN has reached out to Hamas for comment on the video.

Hamas postpones hostage handover

Soon after Netanyahu said Israel would carry out new strikes in Gaza, the armed wing of Hamas announced it would postpone the handover of a hostage’s body that was recovered in southern Gaza on Tuesday due to Israel’s “violations.”

The militant group also warned that any Israeli escalation would “hinder search and excavation operations and the retrieval of bodies” of the deceased Israeli hostages.

Hamas had been set to transfer remains of a deceased hostage to Israel via the Red Cross on Tuesday. The group said the body had been pulled from a tunnel in Khan Younis.

A second body was unearthed in Nuseirat in central Gaza from the rubble of a building where Israel had carried out a rescue operation in June 2024. The operation rescued three Israeli hostages.

Hamas said at the time that other hostages had been killed during the Israeli operation, which both Israel and the US denied. But CNN has geolocated footage from the recovery of the body that shows it is the same building where the rescue occurred, raising fresh questions about whether Israeli hostages were killed during the mission. The Palestinian Ministry of Health said more than 270 Palestinians were killed and hundreds injured as a result of the rescue operation.

Hamas returned partial remains to Israel Monday that did not belong to any of the 13 hostages still unaccounted for in the enclave. Israel identified the remains as belonging to Ofir Tzarfati, a hostage who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival on October 7 and recovered during an Israeli military operation in Gaza in November 2023.

Israel launched its war on Hamas after the October 7, 2023, terror attacks in which the militant group and its allies killed more than 1,200 people and took 251 hostages to Gaza.

In the two years since, more than 68,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 170,000 injured in the enclave, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.

Thousands of Palestinians are believed to be buried under the rubble.

Israel approved the ceasefire on October 9, 2025. The agreement included several conditions, including the release of all Israeli hostages both living and dead, and the withdrawal of some Israeli troops from Gaza. As of Tuesday, Hamas had returned only 15 of the 28 bodies of deceased hostages who remained in Gaza at the time the ceasefire was signed.

Ibrahim Dahman, Mohammad Al Sawalhi, Mohammed Tawfeeq and Eugenia Yosef contributed reporting.

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