Aid worker among dozens of people killed by Israeli attacks across Gaza

Foreign UN worker among those dead one day after Israeli air raids killed more than 400 Palestinians on Tuesday, breaking a months-long ceasefire.

Israeli strikes have killed dozens of people, including a foreign aid worker, in Gaza a day after it launched a wave of strikes that shattered the ceasefire with Hamas.

The deadly Israeli attacks early on Wednesday targeted Khan Younis and Rafah in southern Gaza, as well as Gaza City’s Sabra neighbourhood in the north. Tents housing forcibly displaced people were also hit, killing a mother and a child.

The Israeli army claimed in a statement that it struck a “Hamas military site” in northern Gaza overnight.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said that an international aid worker was killed and five others were wounded in an Israeli attack on central Gaza.

Wednesday’s attacks came after more than 400 Palestinians were killed, many of them children, as Israel resumed its full-fledged bombing of Gaza on Tuesday, shattering a fragile ceasefire with Hamas that had been in place since January 19.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said at least 434 people have been killed in the attacks since Tuesday.

Elsewhere in central Gaza, Palestinians reported an attack on a home near a mosque in Deir el-Balah area, while Israeli helicopter fire and artillery shelling were reported east of the Bureij refugee camp on Wednesday.

media’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from Deir el-Balah, said people in Gaza were left “terrified, helpless and devastated” following the attacks amid the Israeli blockade of aid and electricity cuts.

Tuesday’s attacks attracted widespread condemnation, including from United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres who said he was “outraged by the Israeli air strikes in Gaza”.

China’s European envoy Fu Cong regretted the “harm done to the hard-won ceasefire”. Several lawmakers in the United States also condemned the Israeli attacks, with Senator Bernie Sanders calling for an end to US military aid to Israel.

Israel’s opposition leader and former Prime Minister Yair Lapid called on the public to rally against Netanyahu’s government, accusing it of having “no red lines” after resuming the war in Gaza.

Protests erupt in Israel

The entire nation must “come together and say: ‘Enough!’”, wrote Lapid in a post on X on Wednesday. “I’m calling on all of you – this is our moment, this is our future, this is our country. Take to the streets!” he added.

Thousands of Israelis packed a Tel Aviv square on Tuesday evening to demand the government resume negotiations for a captive deal.