LIVE, Gaza: Civil Defense announces three Israeli bombings on Palestinian territory

The Civil Defense, a relief organization in the Gaza Strip, reported to Agence France-Presse that at least three Israeli bombings targeted the Palestinian territory, shortly after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered "immediate" and "powerful" strikes on the enclave.

The Associated Press, for its part, reported "sounds of tank fire and explosions" heard and observed in Gaza City and other parts of the territory. Witnesses reported a bombing near Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz accused Hamas on Tuesday evening of " attacking IDF [Israeli army] soldiers in the Gaza Strip" and of " violating the agreement regarding the return of the hostages' bodies. " It "will pay dearly for this," he warned in a statement.

The Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, announced in a statement that it was postponing the handover of an Israeli hostage's body scheduled for 8 p.m. local time (7 p.m. in Paris), "due to violations committed by the occupation."

Earlier, the armed wing announced that it had found the remains of a hostage during search operations in a tunnel in the southern Gaza Strip. "We emphasize that any Zionist escalation will hinder the searches, excavations and recovery of bodies," the statement warned.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the Israeli army to "immediately" carry out "powerful" strikes on the Gaza Strip, his office announced in a brief statement following consultations with senior defense officials "to discuss Israel's response to the violations [of the ceasefire agreement]."

This decision comes shortly after Hamas members opened fire on Israeli soldiers in Rafah, in the southern Palestinian territory, according to several Israeli media reports. The Israeli army responded with artillery fire, according to the same sources. It also comes after Israel accused Hamas of returning the remains of a hostage whose remains had already been recovered by the army, provoking the anger of hostage relatives and authorities.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun called Tuesday, while receiving US envoy Morgan Ortagus, for an end to attacks by Israel, which has intensified its bombing of Lebanon. The head of state stressed "the need to reactivate the ceasefire monitoring mechanism (...) , particularly to stop the ongoing Israeli violations and attacks," according to a statement from his office. During his visit to Lebanon, Morgan Ortagus is scheduled to attend a meeting of the ceasefire monitoring mechanism, which includes, in addition to Lebanon and Israel, the United States, France, and the UN.

In recent days, Israeli aircraft have intensified their strikes in Lebanon, claiming to be targeting Hezbollah members or infrastructure, despite the ceasefire agreed in November 2024. Since Thursday, 13 people have been killed by Israeli strikes, according to the Lebanese health ministry. On Tuesday, the spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Jeremy Laurence, said during a press conference in Geneva that "111 civilians – 74 men, 21 women and 16 children –" had been killed in Lebanon by Israeli forces since the end of the war, and that "more than 82,000 remain displaced."

Israeli authorities have issued demolition orders for 14 homes in Umm Al-Khair, a village in the Hebron governorate in the southwest of the West Bank, according to the Palestinian news agency WAFa . The demolition notices also affect a community center and an agricultural complex, the same source said.

Umm Al-Khair is one of the most targeted Bedouin communities in the region, according to WAFa, which reports around 100 “residential, agricultural, and service facilities” have been demolished since 2007, with the latest demolition order issued in February. “Today,” the agency emphasizes, “the village’s residents live in difficult conditions, amid their suffering (…) and the escalation of violence by settlers, who recently established a colonial outpost on the village’s lands, in a new attempt to displace residents and seize their land.”

Members of the Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, search for the bodies of hostages in a tunnel discovered during excavations in Hamad City, a neighborhood of Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Tuesday, October 28, 2025.

The Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, announced that it will hand over at 8 p.m. local time (7 p.m. Paris time) another body of a hostage held in the Gaza Strip, according to a statement posted on its Telegram channel. They specified that the body "was recently found in a tunnel in the Gaza Strip."

Thank you for your question. According to Israel, the human remains returned by Hamas last night are not those of one of the 13 hostages whose bodies the Islamist movement must still return, under the ceasefire agreement. After identification, the Israeli Prime Minister's Office announced that they belonged to Ofir Tzarfati, kidnapped on October 7, 2023, at the age of 27, at the Nova music festival. Some of his remains were brought back from the Gaza Strip by the Israeli army in December 2023. Other remains of Ofir Tzarfati were returned to Israel in March 2024. In a statement by the Hostage Forum, the Tzarfati family said Tuesday that this was the third time they had been forced to open Ofir's grave and rebury his remains.

Israel continues to "flagrantly and systematically violate the ceasefire agreement" in force since October 10, the media office of the government of the Gaza Strip, administered by Hamas, denounced in a statement released Tuesday on Telegram . The latter recorded "125 violations" of the ceasefire, resulting in "the death of 94 civilians and more than 344 wounded."

The media office counted "52 shooting operations directly targeting civilians" , "9 vehicle incursions into residential areas crossing the yellow line" , "55 bombing operations" , "11 operations to demolish civilian buildings, in addition to the arrest of 21 citizens in different areas of the Gaza Strip" .

"We call on US President Donald Trump, the guarantor countries and the mediators to assume their responsibilities and to exert real pressure on the occupation so that it immediately ceases its violations and respects its signed commitments," concludes the statement, which at the same time calls for "the rapid, complete and permanent opening of the crossings" to allow the entry of humanitarian aid and the transfer of the wounded and sick.

Far-right Minister of Internal Security Itamar Ben Gvir said on the social network X that the fact that "Hamas continues to play and does not immediately transfer all the remains" proves that it is "still standing." "It is time to break its legs once and for all," he declared. His colleague in Finance, another far-right figure, Bezalel Smotrich, announced on X that he would ask Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to arrest "all the terrorists released as part of the hostage exchange" in the West Bank.

Earlier, Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem told Agence France-Presse that his movement was "determined to hand over the bodies (...) as soon as they are located," but reiterated that in a territory ravaged by two years of bombing, finding them was "complex and difficult." On the ground, the Red Cross and an Egyptian team are participating in the search for the bodies.

Public television channel ZDF came under fire in Germany on Tuesday, October 28, for using a Gaza-based production company that employed a technician who has since been killed and identified as a member of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.

The channel denied on Tuesday that its office in Israel had been in contact with the 37-year-old technician, who died in an Israeli strike on October 19, along with his son and another employee of the production company PMP.

Ottilie Klein, a member of parliament for the conservative CDU party led by Friedrich Merz, called for "a thorough and comprehensive explanation." "First and foremost, it must be investigated whether Hamas and its supporters had any influence on the nature and content of ZDF's reports," she told the tabloid Bild , the country's most widely read daily.

ZDF reported that the Israeli army provided it with proof on Monday that the PMP employee was a member of the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas. The channel announced that it had "suspended its cooperation with this company until further notice," according to a statement.

Martin Huber, secretary general of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), denounced in Bild a "scandalous incident" which had caused "serious damage" to the credibility of the channel. "ZDF and all journalists must be careful not to employ members of Hamas or to broadcast their propaganda," he declared.

On Tuesday, ZDF stated in its statement that the technician worked in the broadcasting sector, that he had never been directly employed by the channel, that he was not involved in journalistic activities and that there had never been any "contact between the ZDF studio in Tel Aviv and the killed technician."

ZDF has been working with PMP since 1996. According to the channel, there is no indication that other PMP employees are members of Hamas.

The Forum of Families of Hostages and the Disappeared, the main Israeli group campaigning for the return of Gaza hostages, called Tuesday for action against Hamas after the announcement that human remains returned to Israel on Monday belong to a hostage whose remains had already been recovered by the army.

"Hamas knows the hostages' location and continues to act with contempt, deceiving the United States and mediators while dishonoring our loved ones," the Hostage Families Forum continued. "The Israeli government cannot and must not ignore this, and must act decisively against these violations."

"We demand an urgent and immediate meeting with the Prime Minister today, during which he will present a comprehensive plan to bring our loved ones home, every last one," the statement continued.

The Israeli Prime Minister's Office announced that the human remains handed over Monday evening by the Palestinian Islamist movement "belonged to the hostage Ofir Tzarfati," who was kidnapped on October 7, 2023, and some of whose remains had been brought back from the Gaza Strip "during a military operation about two years ago."

"This is the third time we have been forced to open Ofir's grave and rebury our son," the family of Ofir Tzarfati said in a statement. "We went to sleep last night with the hope that another family can finally close a painful two-year cycle and bring [a] loved one home for burial," they said.

"This morning we were shown video footage of our beloved son's remains being removed, [...] and handed over to the Red Cross – a heinous manipulation designed to sabotage the agreement and abandon efforts to bring all the hostages home," the family says.

The group, which also includes a few adults, is due to arrive in Paris on Tuesday. These evacuation operations were halted at the end of July following the arrival in France of a young Gazan woman, who was due to join Sciences Po Lille at the start of the academic year and who had made hateful remarks against Jews on anonymous websites.

Control procedures are now being reinforced, according to the Quai d'Orsay, to ensure that "people evacuated to our country respect the values ​​and principles of the Republic." France has been able to resume these operations on a small scale.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said Tuesday that the remains of a hostage returned by Hamas late Monday were those of a hostage found in Gaza by Israeli soldiers in December 2023.

"Following the identification process, it was established that the remains of the deceased hostage Ofir Tzarfati, may his memory be blessed, which were recovered in the Gaza Strip during a military operation about two years ago, were returned yesterday evening. His family has been informed," the Israeli Prime Minister's office wrote on X.

Ofir Tzarfati was abducted from the Nova Music Festival during the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.

"This constitutes a flagrant violation of the [ceasefire] agreement by the terrorist organization Hamas," the statement continued, adding that Benjamin Netanyahu "will hold a meeting with the heads of the security services to discuss the measures that Israel will take in response to these violations."

The Abu Kabir Institute of Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv found no match between the remains handed over to Israel on Monday evening and the 13 dead hostages still in Gaza, Israeli media, including Haaretz and The Times of Israel , reported Tuesday.

The coffin delivered Monday evening is said to contain the remains of a hostage whose body has already been partially returned to Israel for burial, according to the media.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will call an emergency meeting on Tuesday evening, he added. Kan public broadcaster , to discuss measures to be taken against Hamas "for not returning the dead hostages and violating [the terms of] the ceasefire agreement."

Israeli police announced Tuesday that they had killed three Palestinians, described as members of a "terrorist cell" , during a raid carried out with the army in the village of Kafr Qoud, west of Jenin.

"During an offensive operation carried out by the forces of Yamam," an elite police counter-terrorism commando, in Kafr Qoud, "the fighters (...) acted to neutralize a terrorist cell that was planning to commit an attack and which was part of a terrorist organization active in the Jenin camp," the Israeli police said in a statement.

"The forces spotted the cell members emerging from a cave. The unit's snipers then opened fire with precision, eliminating the three terrorists," the text adds.

The Israeli military said it then "attacked the terrorists from the air" to destroy the underground hideout from which they had emerged. "Shortly after, an air raid was carried out by the Israeli Air Force on the cave from which they had emerged, in order to destroy the terrorist infrastructure located there," the police said.

The Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah identified the three men, all in their twenties, as Abdullah Mohammed Omar Jalamneh, Qais Ibrahim Mohammed Al-Beitawi and Ahmed Azmi Aref Nashrati.

Footage from Agence France-Presse showed Palestinian firefighters extinguishing flames on the charred wreckage of a car and nearby olive trees in the village, near the entrance to a small cave. The video shows mattresses and personal belongings.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the raid thwarted "a serious threat of attack." "Any attempt by terrorist organizations to rebuild terrorist infrastructure in Judea and Samaria [the name given by Israel to the West Bank] – which we have dismantled and destroyed in the terrorist camps (...) – will be suppressed with an iron fist,” Mr. Katz wrote on X. The Israeli army “will remain present in the terrorist camps of Jenin, Tulkarem and Nour Shams in order to prevent terrorism and attacks,” he added.

Last winter, shortly after the start of a previous truce in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army launched a massive operation in the refugee camps in the northern West Bank. In this Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, it displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians, demolishing dozens of buildings and opening new access routes into densely populated areas.

Since October 7, 2023, and before Tuesday's operation, at least 988 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces or settlers, according to figures from the Palestinian Health Ministry.

"The hostage's coffin, escorted by [Israeli] troops , recently crossed the border into the State of Israel and is on its way to the National Institute of Forensic Medicine, where identification procedures will be carried out," the Israeli army said . Since the ceasefire between Hamas and the Israeli army, which came into effect on October 10, 16 of the 28 dead hostages have been handed over to Israel.

The Israeli government had earlier announced that a team comprising members of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Egyptian rescuers, and a Hamas representative were searching for the remains of hostages in Gaza. In footage filmed by Agence France-Presse in the Touffah neighborhood of Gaza City, construction equipment and trucks were operating amid the ruins in an attempt to recover bodies.

Recalling that under the terms of the ceasefire agreement all hostages, dead and alive, should have been returned by October 13, the Families Forum, the main Israeli organization of hostage families, called on Monday "the Israeli government, the American administration and the mediators not to move to the next phase of the agreement until Hamas has fulfilled all of its obligations."

The second phase of US President Donald Trump's plan to definitively end two years of war includes the disarmament of Hamas, amnesty or exile for its fighters, and the continuation of Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, points that remain open to debate.

Palestinians and Egyptian workers search for hostage bodies in Hamad City, Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Monday, October 27, 2025.