Israeli forces attack Gaza after ceasefire deadline missed

Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said earlier on Sunday the implementation of a ceasefire was delayed as Hamas had not fulfilled its obligation to send Israel the list of hostages to be released on the first day.

Jerusalem/Cairo: Israeli warplanes and artillery attacked the northern Gaza Strip on Sunday and Palestinian medics said eight people were killed shortly after Israel and Hamas missed a deadline for a ceasefire that could pave the way for halting the Middle East's most devastating conflict in years.

The delay in implementing the ceasefire and the latest violence came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked, an hour before the 0630 GMT deadline, that Hamas provide the names of three hostages it was to release on Sunday as part of the agreement.

Hamas said it was committed to the ceasefire but that it had been unable so far to provide the hostage list for "technical field reasons", without elaborating.

The ceasefire deal could help usher in an end to the Gaza war, which began after Palestinian militant group Hamas, which controls the tiny coastal territory, attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities.

Israel's response decimated the Gaza Strip, killing nearly 47,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza-based health authorities. The war also set off a confrontation throughout the Middle East between Israel and its arch-foe Iran, which backs Hamas and other anti-Israeli and anti-American paramilitary forces across the region.

Israeli military spokespeople said in separate statements on Sunday that their aircraft and artillery had attacked "terror targets" in northern and central Gaza, and that the military would continue to attack the strip as long as Hamas did not meet its obligations under the ceasefire.

The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said that at least eight people were killed in the Israeli attacks and dozens wounded. Medics reported tanks firing at the Zeitoun area of Gaza City, and said that an airstrike and tank fire also hit the northern town of Beit Hanoun, sending residents who had returned there in anticipation of the ceasefire fleeing.

An air raid siren that sounded in the Sderot area of southern Irael had been a false alarm, the Israeli military said in a separate statement.

In the southern city of Khan Younis, some celebratory gunshots and cheers were heard at 8:30 a.m. (0630 GMT) when the ceasefire was meant to take effect.

Israeli forces had started withdrawing from areas in Gaza's Rafah to the Philadelphi corridor along the border between Egypt and Gaza, pro-Hamas media reported early on Sunday.

Hostage list

Netanyahu's demand for a list of the first three hostages , who were to be released in the hours following the ceasefire, came an hour before the deadline.

"The prime minister instructed the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) that the ceasefire, which is supposed to go into effect at 8:30 a.m., will not begin until Israel has the list of released abductees that Hamas has pledged to provide," his office said on Sunday.

Hamas said the delay was "technical" but that the hostages' names could be released very soon.

The three-stage ceasefire agreement followed months of on-off negotiations brokered by Egypt, Qatar and the United States, and came just ahead of the Jan. 20 inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump.

Its first stage will last six weeks, during which 33 of the remaining 98 hostages - women, children, men over 50, the ill and wounded - will be released in return for almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.

They include 737 male, female and teen-aged prisoners, some of whom are members of militant groups convicted of attacks that killed dozens of Israelis, as well as hundreds of Palestinians from Gaza in detention since the start of the war.

The first three are female hostages expected to be released through the Red Cross on Sunday. In return for each, 30 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails are to be released.

Under the terms of the deal, Hamas will inform the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) where the meeting point will be inside Gaza and the ICRC is expected to begin driving to that location to collect the hostages, an official involved in the process told Reuters.

Ending the war?

After Sunday's hostage release, lead U.S. negotiator Brett McGurk said, the accord calls for four more female hostages to be freed after seven days, followed by the release of three further hostages every seven days thereafter.

US President Joe Biden's team worked closely with Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff to push the deal over the line.

As his inauguration approached, Trump had repeated his demand that a deal be done swiftly, warning repeatedly that there would be "hell to pay" if the hostages were not released.

But what will come next in Gaza remains unclear in the absence of a comprehensive agreement on the postwar future of the enclave, which will require billions of dollars and years of work to rebuild.

And although the stated aim of the ceasefire is to end the war entirely, it could easily unravel.

Hamas, which has controlled Gaza for almost two decades, has survived despite losing its top leadership and thousands of fighters.

Israel has vowed it will not allow Hamas to return to power and has cleared large stretches of ground inside Gaza, in a step widely seen as a move towards creating a buffer zone that will allow its troops to act freely against threats in the enclave.

In Israel, the return of the hostages may ease some of the public anger against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing government over the Oct. 7 security failure that led to the deadliest single day in the country's history.

Mideast shockwaves

The war sent shockwaves across the region, triggering a conflict with the Tehran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah movement and bringing Israel into direct conflict with its arch-foe Iran for the first time.

It has also transformed the Middle East. Iran, which spent billions building up a network of militant groups around Israel, has seen its "Axis of Resistance" wrecked and was unable to inflict more than minimal damage on Israel in two major missile attacks.

Hezbollah, whose huge missile arsenal was once seen as the biggest threat to Israel, has seen its its top leadership killed and most of its missiles and military infrastructure destroyed.

On the diplomatic front, Israel has faced outrage and isolation over the death and devastation in Gaza.

Netanyahu faces an International Criminal Court arrest warrant on war crimes allegations and separate accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice.

Israel has reacted with fury to both cases, rejecting the charges as politically motivated and accusing South Africa, which brought the original ICJ case as well as the countries that have joined it, of antisemitism.