Israel steps up deadly airstrikes on Gaza after ceasefire deal reached

TEL AVIV – Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement it will come to pass too late for Akram Abu Ahmed to see his children again.

The sole survivor of his family following an Israeli airstrike, Ahmed was sleeping in the Gaza City neighborhood in the early hours of Thursday after celebrating news of the peace when he heard a loud noise and he was thrown into the air.

“Dust and screams surrounded me,” Abu Ahmed told an NBC News crew on the ground in Gaza on Thursday. His wife and three of his children were killed, including a daughter he claimed was a doctor.

“Is this what they're aiming for? Killing doctors?” he said. Addressing his next question to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he said, “Why did you kill my daughter?”

In less than two days since the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas announced on Wednesday, fighting in Gaza and a series of deadly airstrikes have killed at least 115 people, said Mahmoud Basal, spokesman for the Gaza Civil Defense group in an interview on Friday.

Among those killed, he said, were at least 28 children and 31 women, with at least 265 people injured. More deaths were reported across the ocean.

The hours surrounding the truce deal marked “the bloodiest day of the past week” for Gaza, Basal told NBC News on Friday.

In a statement on Friday, the United Nations Human Rights Council said condemned the strikes, saying “we are disappointed that Israel continued to bomb Gaza indiscriminately shortly after the agreement was announced, killing Palestinian civilians despite expectations of calm until the ceasefire takes effect . “

The council urged all parties to accept the Gaza ceasefire agreement to end “15 months of horrific and horrific suffering in Gaza.” “

The Israel Defense Forces said Thursday that it had carried out strikes on “around” 50 targets across the Gaza Strip “over the last day.”

He said some of the targets included “Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorism, weapons compounds, weapons storage facilities, launch posts, weapons manufacturing sites, and observation posts.”

The army also said it killed in a strike Muhammad Hasham Zahedi Abu Al-Rus, who it said took part in the deadly attack at the Nova music festival as part of the October 7 terror attacks led by Hamas, in which there were about 1,200 people. were killed and about 250 were taken.

Israel launched its 15-month offensive in Gaza after that attack, and more than 46,500 people, including thousands of children, have been killed in Gaza since then, according to local health officials.

The IDF has maintained that it does not target civilians and, prior to this week's strikes, “several measures were taken to minimize the risk of harming civilians and civilian infrastructure ,” including the use of aerial surveillance, precision weapons and additional information.

Researchers have suggested that the death toll in Gaza could be much higher than the official figures. In a peer-reviewed study published earlier this month in The Lancet magazine, researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine estimated that up to 64,260 people died in “traumatic injury deaths” from October 7, 2023, to June 30, 2024 alone.

Government of Israel vote on friday to agree the contract. The Supreme Court will have 24 hours to allow any appeals, with the possibility of a ceasefire coming into effect as early as Sunday.

But until then, the airstrikes will probably continue.

On Thursday, four young children, who witnesses say were killed in the series of airstrikes launched by the IAF, lay bloodied and lifeless on the ground outside a hospital in the Gaza City.

In a video captured by an NBC News crew on the ground, their small bodies were buried along with the bodies of other victims at Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital.

“They were sleeping happily with the news of stability,” one man told the crew. Then “the Israeli planes shadowed us.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com