Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday he has ordered the army to immediately carry out “powerful strikes” in Gaza, a new test for the tenuous U.S.-brokered ceasefire.
The order from Netanyahu follows heightened tensions, as Israel reported Hamas firing on its forces in southern Gaza and after Hamas returned a set of remains that Israel said belonged to a hostage recovered earlier in the war.
“This constitutes a clear violation of the [Gaza peace] agreement” by Hamas, Netanyahu’s office said, adding that the prime minister would meet with the heads of Israel’s defense establishment, “during which Israel’s steps in response to the violations will be discussed.”
In a sign of the fragility of the ceasefire, Israeli troops were shot at in the southern city of Rafah on Tuesday and returned fire, according to an Israeli military official who spoke on condition of anonymity because there hasn’t been an official announcement yet.
There are still 13 bodies of hostages in Gaza. Hamas said Tuesday it had recovered the body of a hostage, but after Netanyahu announced the plans to strike Gaza, Hamas said in a statement it would delay the handover.
An Associated Press videographer in Khan Younis witnessed what appeared to be a white body bag being carried out from a tunnel by several men, including some masked militants, and then transported into an ambulance. It was not immediately clear what was in the bag.
The slow return of hostages’ bodies is posing a challenge to implementing the next stages of the ceasefire, which will address even knottier issues, such as the disarmament of Hamas, the deployment of an international security force in Gaza and deciding who will govern the territory.
Later Tuesday the Israel Defense Forces accused Hamas of “attempting to create a false impression of efforts to locate the bodies, while in fact holding deceased hostages whose remains it refuses to release as required by the agreement.”
The IDF said its drones had recorded Hamas operatives “removing body remains from a structure that had been prepared in advance and burying them nearby” on Monday, and then staging “a false display of discovering a deceased hostage’s body.”
Hamas has said it is struggling to locate the bodies amid the vast destruction in Gaza, while Israel has accused the militant group of purposely delaying their return. Over the weekend, Egypt deployed a team of experts and heavy equipment to help search for the bodies of the remaining hostages. That work continued Tuesday in Khan Younis and Nuseirat.
Israeli hostage negotiator and peace campaigner Gershon Baskin told CBS News earlier this month that it was “very likely that there might be Israeli bodies underneath the rubble” in Gaza, where the Hamas-run government estimates that at least 90% of the buildings have been damaged or destroyed.
This is the second time since the ceasefire began on Oct. 10 that remains turned over by Hamas have been problematic. Israel said one of the bodies Hamas released in the first week of the ceasefire belonged to an unidentified Palestinian.
During a previous ceasefire in February 2025, Hamas said it handed over the bodies of three hostages, Shiri Bibas and her two sons, but testing showed that one of the bodies returned was identified as a Palestinian woman. Shiri Bibas’ body was returned a day later.
The remains returned overnight have been identified as belonging to Ofir Tzarfati, Netanyahu’s office said.
Tzarfati was kidnapped from the Nova music festival in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel that started the war. In all, the militants killed some 1,200 people that day, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages.
Tzarfati was killed in captivity and his body was retrieved by Israeli troops in November 2023. In March 2024, his family received additional remains for burial.
Tzarfati’s family said in a statement that this is the third time “we have been forced to open Ofir’s grave and rebury our son.”
In exchange for 15 dead hostages returned from Gaza since the ceasefire began, Israel has handed back to Gaza 195 Palestinian bodies. The last 20 living hostages were returned to Israel at the start of the ceasefire, and in exchange, Israel freed roughly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.
Earlier Tuesday, Israeli authorities said they had killed three Palestinian militants early during an operation in the northern part of the occupied West Bank, the latest action in Israel’s stepped-up military activity in the territory since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack.
Israeli police said the three men were shot as they came out of a cave near Jenin, a town in the northern West Bank known as a militant stronghold. The Israeli military said in a statement that the militants “took part in terror activity in Jenin,” but gave no further details.
Two militants were shot and killed in the initial volley of gunfire. The third, who was wounded, was killed shortly after, according to the Israeli military.
An earlier statement said the Israeli military carried out an airstrike shortly afterward to destroy the cave. The army confirmed an airstrike in the area but gave no further details.
Hamas condemned the Jenin strike and later identified two of the three men as militants with Hamas’ Qassam Brigades. The third man was referred to as a “comrade,” but no additional details about him were given.
Israel says its operations have cracked down on militants in the West Bank. But Palestinians and human rights groups say scores of uninvolved civilians have also been among the dead, while tens of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes.
Over 68,500 Palestinians have died in the two-year war in Gaza, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. The ministry maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. Israel has disputed them without providing its own toll.