TEL AVIV — The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas will come into force too late for Akram Abu Ahmed to be reunited with his children.
Ahmed, his family’s only survivor after an Israeli airstrike, was sleeping in the Gaza City strip early Thursday morning after celebrating news of the truce when he heard a loud bang and was thrown into the air.
“Dust and screams surrounded me,” Abu Ahmed told NBC News reporters on the ground in Gaza on Thursday. His wife and three children were killed, including his daughter, who was a doctor.
“Is this what they want to do? Kill the doctor?” he said. In his next question to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he said, “Why did you kill my daughter?”
At least 115 people have been killed in fighting and a series of deadly airstrikes in Gaza, less than two days after a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas was announced on Wednesday, reports Mahmoud Bassar of the Gaza Civil Defense Agency. officials said in an interview Friday.
He said at least 28 children and 31 women were among the dead, and at least 265 people were injured. More deaths were reported across the enclave.
The hours surrounding the cease-fire agreement were the “bloodiest days of the past week” for Gaza, Bassal told NBC News on Friday.
The United Nations Human Rights Council condemned the airstrike in a statement on Friday, saying, “Israel continued its indiscriminate bombing of the Gaza Strip from the moment the agreement was announced, despite hopes of peace until the ceasefire took effect.” “We regret the killing of Palestinian civilians.”
The council called on all parties to accept the Gaza ceasefire agreement to end “15 months of untold and horrific suffering in Gaza.”
The Israel Defense Forces announced Thursday that it had attacked “approximately” 50 targets across the Gaza Strip “in the past day.”
The report said some of the targets included “Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists, military installations, weapons storage facilities, launch pads, weapons manufacturing sites, and observation posts.”
The military also announced that it had killed Mohammad Hasham Zahedi Abu al-Rus in a strike, who was responsible for the deadly assault at the Nova music festival as part of the Hamas-led October 7 terrorist attack. It was announced that approximately 1,200 people were killed. About 250 people were killed and taken hostage.
More than 46,500 people, including thousands of children, have been killed in Gaza following Israel’s 15-month offensive against Gaza, local health officials said.
The Israel Defense Forces said it was not targeting civilians and that ahead of this week’s airstrikes, it had used “over-the-air surveillance, precision weapons, and additional intelligence to reduce the risk of damage to civilians and civilian infrastructure.” A number of measures have been taken.”
Researchers have suggested that the death toll in Gaza may be significantly higher than officially announced. In a peer-reviewed study published in The Lancet earlier this month, researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that between October 7, 2023 and June 30, 64,260 people died from traumatic injuries. was presumed dead. , in 2024 alone.
The Israeli government voted to approve the deal on Friday. The Supreme Court now has 24 hours to approve the appeal, and the cease-fire could come into effect as early as Sunday.
But until then, airstrikes may continue.
On Thursday, four young children lay covered in blood on the ground outside a hospital in Gaza City, where witnesses say they died in a series of airstrikes launched by the IAF.
Footage taken by an NBC News team at the scene showed their tiny bodies wrapped with those of other victims at Al Ahly Baptist Hospital.
“They were sleeping happily hearing the news of the ceasefire,” one man told the crew. Then “Israeli military planes shelled us.”
