Israel launched deadly airstrikes in Gaza after a ceasefire was reached

TEL AVIV – The Israel-Hamas ceasefire will take effect late so that Akram Abu Ahmed can see his children again.

The only survivor of his family after the Israeli airstrikes, Ahmed was sleeping in Gaza City early Thursday morning after celebrating the news of the ceasefire when he heard a loud noise and was thrown into the air.

“Dust and screaming are all around me,” Abu Ahmed told an NBC News crew on the ground in Gaza on Thursday. His wife and three children died, including a daughter who he said is a doctor.

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

In less than two days since the cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas was announced on Wednesday, fighting in Gaza and a series of airstrikes have killed at least 115 people, said Mahmoud Basal, spokesman for the Gaza Defense Organization speaking on Friday.

Of the dead, he said at least 28 children and 31 women were injured, and at least 265 people were injured. More deaths were reported across the region.

The hours surrounding the ceasefire marked “the bloodiest day of this past week” in Gaza, Basal told NBC News on Friday.

In a statement on Friday, the Human Rights Council of the United Nations condemned these strikes, saying “it disappoints us that right after the announcement of the agreement, Israel continued to bombard Gaza indiscriminately, killing Palestinian citizens even though it was expected that there would be peace until the fighting started.”

The council called on all parties to accept the Gaza ceasefire agreement to end “15 months of intense and terrible suffering in Gaza.”

The Israel Defense Forces said on Thursday it had carried out strikes in “almost 50 locations” in the Gaza Strip “in the last day.”

It said some of the targets included “Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists, military organizations, weapons depots, launch sites, weapons production facilities and observation posts.”

The army also said it killed Muhammad Hasham Zahedi Abu Al-Rus in the strike, which it said was involved in the deadly attack on the Nova music center as part of the Hamas-led terror attack on October 7, in which around 1,200 people were killed. they were killed and about 250 were captured.

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

The IDF has maintained that it is not targeting civilians and that, before the strikes this week, “a number of measures were taken to reduce the risk of harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure,” including the use of aerial surveillance, precision weapons and increased intelligence.

Investigators have suggested that the number of dead in Gaza may be much higher than the official numbers. In a peer-reviewed study published earlier this month in the journal The Lancet, researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine estimated that nearly 64,260 people died from “tragic injury deaths” since Oct. 7, 2023, to June 30, 2024 only.

The Israeli government voted on Friday to ratify the deal. The High Court will now have 24 hours to allow any appeals, with the possibility of an adjournment from Sunday.

But until then, the airstrikes may continue.

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

In a video captured by NBC News crews on the ground, their small bodies were buried next to the bodies of other victims at Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital.

“They were sleeping and happy about the news of closing the deal,” another man told the workers. Then “Israeli planes fired at us.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com