Updated March 18, 2025 at 13:49 PM ET
GAZA CITY, Gaza and TEL AVIV, Israel — Israel has declared the ceasefire in Gaza over, with a surprise wave of devastating airstrikes in Gaza Tuesday. The barrage killed more than 400 people including many women and children, and injured at least 500, according to Gaza health officials.
"Israel is returning to intensified fighting in Gaza," according to an internal Israeli government memo obtained by NPR. The new offensive is dubbed "Operation Strength and Sword."
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the attacks targeted Hamas and were launched because the group was refusing to accept terms proposed by the U.S. for the release of more hostages captured in the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel. Hamas offered a counterproposal which the U.S. and Israel rejected.
The Israeli strikes come days after Israeli negotiators returned from a round of talks in Egypt aimed at reaching a new deal for releasing hostages and jumpstarting discussions on a permanent end of war. "If Hamas does not release all the hostages, the gates of hell will open in Gaza," Katz said in a statement.
Senior Hamas official Bassem Naim, based in Qatar, said mediators had not presented Hamas with any new framework to return to a ceasefire since Israel's offensive began Tuesday.
Naim told NPR the U.S. must "intervene immediately to stop this aggression" and called on Israel to adhere to an earlier agreement reached in January for the sides to enter talks for a permanent end of the war.
Hamas said five of its senior officials — serving midlevel leadership roles in the Hamas-run government in Gaza — were killed in the strikes along with their families. Israel is focusing on midranking militant commanders and leadership officials to degrade Hamas' ability to build up its forces and rearm, according to an Israeli official, who did not have authorization to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
At Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, scores of bodies were laid out in the hospital courtyard. A man cradled the body of his 2-year-old daughter in a pink T-shirt with the word "love" written on it, trying to open her eyes.
"We never expected the war to return," said Ibrahim Deeb, who said 35 members of his family were killed in a strike on their home in a neighborhood of Gaza City.
Hamas said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government had "decided to overturn the ceasefire agreement" and said it was exposing Israeli hostages in Gaza "to an unknown fate."
A group representing the families of Israeli hostages rallied in Jerusalem in protest, accusing the Israeli government of endangering the hostages. Israel says 24 hostages are still being held alive there and that Hamas is also holding the bodies of 35 hostages.
"Netanyahu has decided to murder our hostages!" wrote Einav Tsangouker, the mother of a hostage in Gaza and a vocal critic of the Israeli prime minister, in a Facebook post.
Israel says it approved the surprise plan last weekend
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that the Trump administration had been consulted by the Israelis about the strikes.
"As President Trump has made it clear, Hamas, the Houthis, Iran, all those who seek to terrorize not just Israel, but also the United States of America, will see a price to pay. All hell will break loose," Leavitt said.
For weeks, Israeli officials had been publicly warning they were preparing plans to resume war in Gaza should ceasefire talks break down. The latest assault plans were presented by Israeli military officials to the government over the past weekend, Netanyahu's office said.
In a statement posted on social media, the Israeli military ordered Palestinian residents from several neighborhoods to evacuate immediately, saying that Israel has "launched a strong offensive against terrorist organizations."
Mediators were still working on a ceasefire proposal
In mid-January, Israel and Hamas agreed to an initial phase of six weeks in which Hamas released 33 of its hostages, both living and dead. In return, Israel released close to 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees who had been held in Israeli prisons.
That phase ended at the beginning of March, but the second phase, in which talks designed to end the war were due to begin, did not start because Israel demanded more hostages be released before entering end-of-war talks. Israel began blocking food, fuel, electricity, aid and medical supplies to Gaza to pressure Hamas to accept. That blockade has continued and is entering its third week.
Last week, President Trump's Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff proposed that Hamas would release around half of the remaining hostages in exchange for an extension of the ceasefire and a resumption of aid to Gaza, during which talks would start for a permanent end of the war. Hamas said it would release one dual American-Israeli hostage if talks toward a permanent end of war began immediately.
A hospital in Gaza City is flooded with bodies, including of young children
In Gaza City, in the north, families carried the bodies of the dead and wounded, many wrapped in winter blankets to shield them from the cold, to the Al-Ahli hospital, the only fully functioning hospital in the north. In the courtyard of the hospital, the scene was heavy and chaotic, with bodies covering the floor and relatives weeping over them.
Some families said they pulled the bodies out of the rubble and drove them to the hospital morgue. Some were rushing to drive the bodies of their relatives to a cemetery to bury them.
Many said they were shocked by the sudden and violent return of war.
Suleiman Graiga says he was asleep with his wife in the nearby Shijaiyah neighborhood when they awoke to the sound of shelling in the area. He says he thought it was a bad dream at first.
But then an airstrike hit the house next door – which he says was full of his family members, and was destroyed. He thinks more than a dozen of his family members were killed.
"I expected the ceasefire to continue and for things to get better, and then we had this surprise," he says. "We have no family anymore, we have become extinct."
He begged for the world to intervene.
NPR's Anas Baba reported from Gaza City, and Daniel Estrin and Kat Lonsdorf reported from Tel Aviv. Ahmed Abuhamda contributed from Cairo, Itay Stern from Tel Aviv, Yanal Jabarin from Jerusalem, Nuha Musleh from Ramallah, and Abu Bakr Bashir from London.
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