Sawt Falasteen - Air strikes in Gaza crush joy of ceasefire deal

"We were waiting for the truce and were happy. It was the happiest night since October 7," said Gaza resident Saeed Alloush, referring to the Hamas attack on Israel that sparked the war in 2023.

"Suddenly... we received the news of the martyrdom of 40 people," including his uncle, Alloush said.

"The whole area's joy turned to sadness, as if an earthquake struck."

The latest strikes came after Qatar and the United States announced a fragile ceasefire deal that should take effect on Sunday.

AFP has contacted the Israeli military for comment.

Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for Gaza's civil defence agency, told AFP on Thursday that at least 73 people had been killed in Israeli air strikes since the announcement on Wednesday.

Among them were 20 children and 25 women, he said, with around 200 others wounded.

As day broke, crowds gathered to inspect and clear the remains of a building reduced to rubble, where chunks of concrete lay interspersed with rebar and personal items scattered across the site.

The scenes mirrored those in other parts of the densely populated territory of 2.4 million people, most of whom have been displaced at least once since war broke out in October 2023.

At Nasser Hospital, the main medical facility of the southern city of Khan Yunis, AFP journalists saw stained metal mortuary stretchers stained in red as staff drained them of the blood of the dead in a strike.

In Gaza City's Al-Ahli hospital, where several strike casualties were taken, grieving families knelt by the white shrouds enveloping their loved ones' bodies.

Rescuer Ibrahim Abu al-Rish told AFP that "after the ceasefire was announced and people were happy and joyful, a five-storey building was targeted, with more than 50 people inside".

Wearing headlights, first responders and local residents searched through the rubble late at night in the devastated streets of Gaza City.

Abu al-Rish, an ambulance driver for Gaza's civil defence agency, said Thursday that "shelling is still continuing, targeting one house after another".

- 'Very bloody night' -

In the Al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, resident Mahmud al-Qarnawi told AFP that until the agreement takes hold, Gazans would remain vulnerable.

"The shooting has not stopped, the planes are still in the air and the situation is difficult," he said.

As a result, Qarnawi and others AFP spoke to in the nearby city of Nuseirat said they were worried about what could happen next.

"We must remain cautious. And for the next three days, we are afraid of a (possible) bloodbath (worse) than before," Motaz Bakeer, a displaced Gazan, said from the market at Nuseirat.

International medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said no one could yet feel safe in Gaza.

"Last night it was a lot of cheering for 20 minutes, and then it was a very bloody night," MSF's emergency coordinator Amande Bazerolle told AFP by phone from the territory, rounds of shelling audible in the background.

The Israeli cabinet is expected to approve the Gaza deal later Thursday, though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office accused Hamas of backtracking on elements of the agreement.

Key mediators Qatar and the United States said Wednesday that Israel and Hamas had agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza starting on Sunday, along with a hostage and prisoner exchange.

If the fragile agreement is approved, 33 hostages should be released in a first phase, Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani said.

The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas's attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.

Israel's retaliatory military offensive in Gaza has killed 46,788 people, the majority civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory considered reliable by the United Nations.

D.Khalil--SF-PST