ISRAEL has violated the United States-brokered Gaza ceasefire at least 497 times in 44 days, killing hundreds of Palestinians since the ceasefire came into effect on 10 October, according to the Gaza Government Media Office.
Some 342 civilians have been killed in the attacks, with children, women and the elderly accounting for the majority of the victims.
“We condemn in the strongest terms the continued serious and systematic violations of the ceasefire agreement by the Israeli occupation authorities,” the office said in a statement on Saturday.
“These violations constitute a flagrant breach of international humanitarian law and the humanitarian protocol attached to the agreement. Among these violations, 27 occurred today, Saturday, resulting in 24 martyrs and 87 wounded,” it added.
The office also said Israel was fully responsible for the humanitarian and security repercussions from its violations.
Israel continues to heavily restrict the full and free flow of desperately needed aid and medical supplies into the devastated enclave as was mandated in the ceasefire agreement.
Israel’s military launched a wave of air attacks across Gaza on Saturday, killing at least 24 Palestinians, including children, in its latest violation of a six-week-old ceasefire in the war-torn territory.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said it launched these latest attacks after a Hamas fighter attacked Israeli soldiers in Israeli-occupied territory inside Gaza’s so-called yellow line.
“In response, Israel eliminated five senior Hamas [fighters],” it said in a statement.
Hamas demanded Israel reveal the identity of the fighter that allegedly attacked the Israeli forces.
Izzat al-Risheq, a senior member of Hamas’s political bureau, called on the mediators of the Gaza deal and the US administration to pressure Israel to back its claim and to implement the Gaza agreement.
“Israel is fabricating pretexts to evade the agreement and return to a war of extermination,” he said in a statement.
“It is Israel that violates the agreement daily and systematically.”
He also dismissed the reports that claimed Hamas had called off the ceasefire.
Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Gaza City, said on Sunday that the truce deal in Gaza is only “a ceasefire in name”.
“In reality, despite the announced pause, the Israeli forces carried out a series of air strikes across Gaza,” he said.
Abu Azzoum said such attacks have left Palestinians in Gaza with “a shattered sense of safety” despite the alleged truce.
“Such strikes reinforce the belief that the Gaza deal has been treated as a tactical withdrawal rather than a genuine binding commitment,” he added.
Dozens of Palestinian families have been besieged in northern Gaza, local authorities have said, as the Israeli military has repositioned its forces deeper into the enclave in violation of the ceasefire agreement.
Set out in the agreement between Israel and Hamas, the yellow line refers to an unmarked boundary where the Israeli military repositioned itself when the deal came into effect last month.
It has allowed Israel, which routinely fires at and kills Palestinians who approach the line, to retain control over more than half of the coastal territory.
Hamas said Israel has pushed westwards beyond the yellow line, where Israeli troops are stationed in Gaza, and is changing the boundary set out as part of the deal.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Gaza Forensic Evidence Department told Al Jazeera that the organisation needed laboratories and equipment to examine fingerprints and DNA of the bodies of the Palestinians returned by Israel as part of the truce deal, many of which show signs of torture, mutilation and execution.
“We rely on forensic photography and the observations of the families and face difficulties,” the spokesperson said, calling on the international bodies to provide equipment for the identification process.
The spokesperson added that 330 bodies have been returned by Israel and only 90 have been identified.