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The death toll from Israel’s renewed strikes in Gaza has reached 404, the health ministry in the enclave said, adding that several people remain trapped under the rubble.

Another 562 people have been injured, the health ministry said.

Gaza Civil Defense spokesman, Mahmoud Basal, told CNN that “more than 130 children and many women” have been killed, including entire families.

“We are in front of a very difficult situation and our medical and civil defense efforts do not meet the needed scale of the catastrophe,” Basal said.

Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the decision to restart military operations in Gaza came after “Hamas rejected two concrete mediation proposals presented by the US president’s envoy, Steve Witkoff.”

In a statement on Tuesday, ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein said Israel had agreed to the two proposals, whereas Hamas did not.

“As of this morning, Israel is operating with full force against the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip,” the statement said. “From this point forward, Israel will act against Hamas with increasing military intensity.”

CNN is reaching out to Hamas for comment on Marmorstein’s claim.

Hamas spokesperson Abdul Latif Al-Qanou said earlier Tueday that the group adhered to “all the terms” of the truce the two sides reached in January and “was keen to consolidate it and move to the second phase, but the occupation refused.”

The ceasefire was meant to have three phases. The first phase began in January and expired on March 1. Hamas wanted to enter phase two – which would have seen Israeli troops fully withdraw from Gaza and the release of all living hostages held by Hamas. Israel instead pushed for an extension of phase one, without committing to end the war or withdraw troops.

Fifty-eight hostages abducted in the October 7 attacks remain in Gaza. 193 have been recovered so far.

The mother of Matan Tzangauker, an Israeli hostage in Gaza, has accused Netanyahu of choosing “the murder of hostages” as Israeli airstrikes resumed on Gaza early Tuesday morning.

Einav Tzangauker accused Netanyahu of choosing “cheap politics over our children, our brothers and sisters who are in captivity.”

“This is no longer about rumors or scenarios. This is a war that will bury our families if it is not stopped!” Tzangauker said on Facebook. “Starvation, bombings, Hamas terrorists—these will all kill my Matan and the rest of the hostages.”

She called on the people of Israel to take to the streets and form human barriers.

“I will not let an intelligence officer knock on my door to tell me Matan has been murdered,” Tzangauker said.

Israel’s coordination with the United States ahead of resuming the Gaza war confirms Washington’s “complicity in the war,” Hamas spokesman Abdul Latif Al-Qanou said on Tuesday.

“The occupation’s prior coordination with the US administration confirms its complicity in the war of genocide against our people and provides cover for its war crimes,” Al-Qanou said on Telegram, adding that Hamas calls on the international community to “take immediate action to pressure the occupation to stop the bloodshed in Gaza.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said earlier that Israel notified the Trump administration ahead of its strikes in Gaza.

“The Trump administration and the White House were consulted by the Israelis on their attacks in Gaza tonight – and as President Trump has made it clear, Hamas, the Houthis, all those who seek to terrorize not just Israel but also the United States of America, will see a price to pay. All hell will break loose,” Leavitt told Fox News in an interview.

Hamas’ Al-Qanou said the group adhered to “all the terms” of the truce and “was keen to consolidate it and move to the second phase, but the occupation refused.”

The head of the United Nations’ agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said resuming the Israel-Hamas war would “only bring more despair & suffering,” and called for a return to a ceasefire in Gaza.

Philippe Lazzarini said on X that there were “awful scenes of civilians killed among them children” following Israeli bombardment of the enclave.

“Fueling ‘hell on earth’ by resuming the war will only bring more despair & suffering,” he said.

Israel’s latest bombardment in Gaza has struck tents and buildings where displaced people, including children, have taken refuge since the war began 15 months ago, a spokesperson for the United Nations children’s agency said.

“It’s been a really, really tough night for all of us here in the Al-Mawasi Rafah area. This is the area where families had fled to during the war,” said Rosalia Bollen, a UNICEF spokesperson in southern Gaza’s Rafah.

Gazans woke up to airstrikes around 2 a.m. local time with “very heavy, loud explosions” that left the building they were staying at “violently shaking,” she told CNN’s Christina McFarlane.

Israel’s renewed bombardment comes on the heels of a blockade of aid supplies. Bollen said UNICEF and other humanitarian organizations have not been able to collect critical supplies from the crossings for two weeks.

“And these hospitals will now again be overwhelmed with very severely injured people. And beyond those hundreds reported killed, there will be many more very badly injured, including scores of children, so we call for the reinstatement of the ceasefire – this is absolutely critical to save children’s lives,” Bollen said.

“Bombs have also been hitting tents and other structures where families have taken refuge. There’s dozens of children reported killed, many more injured. And this is just heartbreaking as children in Gaza are already deeply traumatized by 15 long months of relentless war, children in Gaza have been stuck in this permanent cycle of exposure to violence, but also very toxic stress. The realization that nowhere is safe in Gaza.”

Deir al-Balah resident Salah Abu Jamous said he woke up to “the sounds of explosions and fire,” and saw bodies burnt on the street after Israel’s wave of attacks across Gaza overnight.

“We live 40 meters from the bombing site. I woke up to the sounds of explosions and fire, so we went out and came here after the ambulances to see that everything was charred and four bodies were burned.”

Another resident, Rajab Abu Sultan told CNN he had been “pulling the remains of children since this morning” since 2 a.m. local time.

“There was no prior warning; it all happened unexpectedly, and people were in their homes, not even outside.”

“We have been pulling the remains of children since this morning,” Gaza resident Rajab Abu Sultan told CNN, standing among rubble in the Dier al-Balah area after a night of Israeli strikes across the enclave.

Abu Sultan said that residents had gathered since 2 a.m., when the attack began, to “collect the remains of people from the streets.”

“They are all civilians, children,” he said. “There was no prior warning; it all happened unexpectedly, and people were in their homes, not even outside.”

The death toll from Israel’s renewed strikes on Gaza has risen to at least 326, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

Israelis whose family members are still being held hostage in Gaza have demanded to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials after Israel resumed extensive and deadly airstrikes on the enclave, shattering a ceasefire with Hamas.

“The families of the kidnapped are demanding a meeting this morning with the Prime Minister, the Minister of Defense, and the head of the negotiating team, in which it will be made clear how it will be ensured that the hostages will not be harmed by military pressure and how they intend to return them,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said on Tuesday.

“Families of the hostages will demand: Stop the killing and disappearance of the kidnapped now! First return them – then everything else,” a spokesperson for the group said.

The Forum accused officials of not meeting with the group because “they were planning to blow up the ceasefire, which could sacrifice their family members” still held captive in Gaza.

In total, 251 people were kidnapped from Israel in the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023. Of the 59 hostages remaining in Gaza, fewer than half are believed to be alive, according to the count by the Israeli Government Press Office.

The images coming out of Gaza are horribly familiar. Bloodied civilians and children paying the price of Israel’s “extensive strikes” on Hamas targets in Gaza.

The jubilation of two months ago when the ceasefire was declared has been replaced by grief and mourning.

Even in January, it was clear that progressing to the second phase of a three-phase deal Hamas and Israel had agreed to was ambitious. Today it looks almost impossible.

It is a deal that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had very public reservations about. While agreeing to the temporary ceasefire, he insisted both the Biden and Trump administrations had given the green light to return to war if negotiations failed.

He saw his path forward not with mediators Egypt and Qatar, ignoring deadlines stipulated by the deal, but by heading to Washington to meet face to face with President Trump.

Trump’s decision to upend decades of US policy and announce a plan to displace more than two million Palestinians from Gaza and create the “Riviera” of the Middle East, was likely more than Netanyahu could ever have hoped for.

It also sounded the death knell for the original ceasefire deal that Trump himself had taken credit for. By returning to war, Netanyahu has now shored up far-right support in his cabinet, which his political survival relies on.

Those elements have advocated a return to war and a complete destruction of Hamas; a concept even Israeli military officials have said is impossible.

Netanyahu has also diverted domestic attention from his efforts to sideline security and intelligence chiefs and ensured his presence at his own corruption trial be postponed, albeit temporarily.

The decision to return to war though could yet encourage more Israelis to come out to pre-organized protests today and tomorrow, gatherings which were already expected to be sizeable.

One opposition politician Yair Golan says, “the soldiers on the front lines and the hostages in Gaza are merely pawns in his (Netanyahu’s) survival game.”

An advocacy group representing hostage families says their greatest fear has come true, adding “the Israeli government chose to give up on the hostages.”

What is missing this time is a viable off-ramp, or a US president willing to persuade Netanyahu, however unsuccessfully, to temper his actions.

The Israeli military has declared a “massive offensive” in Gaza and ordered civilians in multiple neighborhoods to evacuate.

“The IDF has launched a massive offensive against terrorist organizations. These designated areas are considered dangerous combat zones!” Avichay Adraee, Arabic spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces, wrote in a post on X that also showed a map of Gaza showing swathes of the enclave’s neighborhoods colored red.

He urged residents to evacuate to shelters in western Gaza City and Khan Younis, particularly those in the neighborhoods of Beit Hanoun, Khirbet Khuza’a, Abasan al-Kabira and al-Jadida.

The border fence area has been highly dangerous since fighting began on October 7, 2023 – though the zone appears to have expanded with this latest order, in some areas by several kilometers.

The death toll from Israel’s extensive strikes on Gaza has risen to at least 326, according to the Palestinian health ministry in the enclave.

“A number of victims are still under the rubble, and efforts are underway to recover them,” it said.

More than 440 people have been wounded, some very seriously, as rescue workers search for victims believed to be under the rubble, the ministry said earlier.

China is “highly concerned” about the resumption of widespread and deadly Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, and called for a return to the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, Beijing’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday.

“China is highly concerned about the current Israel-Palestine situation,” Mao Ning, a foreign ministry spokesperson, told a regular press briefing.

She said Beijing “hopes that all parties will earnestly promote the continued and effective implementation of the ceasefire agreement, avoid taking any actions that could lead to an escalation of the situation, and prevent a larger-scale humanitarian disaster.”

Israel’s return to war in Gaza will inevitably worsen the already dire humanitarian situation in the Palestinian territory, a leading humanitarian organization warned on Tuesday.

Shaina Low, a communications adviser at the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), said her colleagues in Gaza were woken up by “intensive bombing” from Israeli attacks that continued until dawn.

“People, including our staff, are, of course, in shock. They are very stressed out. They are very worried about what is to come,” Low told CNN’s Rosemary Church from Jordan’s capital Amman.

About half of the NRC’s Palestinian staff had returned to northern Gaza to see their families and check on their homes since the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect two months ago, Low said.

Israel’s more than two-week-long blockade of food and other humanitarian aid into Gaza has exacerbated suffering in the strip, Low said, adding that the new Israeli bombardment threatened to further restrict residents’ access to vital fuel and water.

“We know that fuel is in short supply,” Low said. “And so, it’s possible that in the coming days we will lose telecommunications, that hospitals will collapse, there will be no clean drinking water available, and food distributions will come to a halt.”

Gaza’s hospitals are “completely full” and struggling to treat wounded Palestinians flooding in following renewed Israeli strikes, the head of the enclave’s biggest hospital said.

“Our hospitals are unable to accommodate the increasing number of injured, as operating rooms are completely full, and the wounded are dying without finding a bed for treatment,” Muhammad Abu Salmiya, of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City said in a post on X.

He said the attack had dealt a blow to “an exhausted healthcare system suffering from a shortage of medications and a severe lack of medical equipment.”

Israel’s strikes have killed over 200 people and wounded hundreds more, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

A doctor at another hospital previously told CNN she had personally pronounced between 15 to 20 people dead in scenes that were “nothing close to anything I’ve experienced before” and that the majority of patients she had seen were children.

The death toll from Israel’s extensive strikes on Gaza has risen to at least 254, according to the Palestinian health ministry in the enclave.

More than 440 people have been wounded, some very seriously, as rescue workers search for victims believed to be under the rubble, the ministry said.

The strikes targeted multiple parts of Gaza, from the south and north to central areas.

Families of Israeli hostages have seen their “greatest fear” realized, an advocacy group representing them said on Tuesday, after Israel launched a wave of deadly strikes on Gaza that shattered the tenuous ceasefire with Hamas.

A spokesperson for the Families’ Headquarters for the Return of the Abductees slammed Israel’s claim that it had attacked Hamas targets in Gaza to facilitate the release of the hostages as “a complete deception,” and demanded a return to the truce.

“The Israeli government chose to give up on the hostages. We are shocked, angry, and terrified by the deliberate dismantling of the process to return our loved ones from the terrible captivity of Hamas,” the spokesperson said.

In total, 251 people were kidnapped from Israel in the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023. Of the dozens of hostages remaining in Gaza, fewer than half are believed to be alive.

“Returning to fighting before the last abductee is released will come at the cost of the 59 abductees who are still in Gaza and could be rescued and returned,” the spokesperson said, adding: “Military pressure endangers hostages and soldiers.”

The families of the hostages also urged US President Donald Trump, who was briefed on Israel’s strikes before they were carried out Tuesday, to help free the remaining captives.

“We call on President Trump to continue to act as he has declared and acted so far, to release all the hostages,” the group said.

Israeli hardliners have welcomed the resumption of widespread deadly airstrikes on Gaza that have shattered a fragile ceasefire with Hamas.

“This is a phased operation that we have planned and built in recent weeks,” said finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is also a far-right member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security council.

“With God’s help, it will look completely different from what has been done so far,” he said.

“This moment is why we remained in the government,” he added, referring to his previous threat to pull out of the ruling coalition if Israel doesn’t restart its war against Hamas.

Itamar Ben Gvir – a far-right figure who quit his post as national security minister over the ceasefire – also welcomed the strikes.

“The existence of Hamas cannot be tolerated, and it is our duty to bring about its collapse,” he said on Telegram.

A spokesman for Ben Gvir said today that talks were underway to bring him back into government.

Israel’s overnight strikes on Gaza came just hours before large-scale protests were slated to take place in Tel Aviv against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to fire the head of Israel’s internal security service.

Netanyahu announced last week that he would remove the chief of the Shin Bet security service, Ronen Bar, citing his “ongoing distrust” of the leader. Netanyahu has frequently criticized the agency, placing blame on its leaders for the security lapses that led to the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023.

But the decision has been controversial. A protest is expected to take place today in Tel Aviv’s Habima Square, with similar protests planned in Jerusalem on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The resumption of widespread airstrikes on Gaza has drawn criticism inside Israel, which remains deeply polarized about Netanyahu’s right-wing administration.

Yair Golan, chairman of Israel’s Democrats party, wrote on X that soldiers and hostages in Gaza were “merely pawns” to the prime minister, calling on the public to “erupt in fury” in protest.

Some context: Even before the latest round of fighting in Gaza, Netanyahu was a divisive figure at home who is embroiled in legal battles and an ongoing corruption trial. He had a hearing scheduled for that trial today – which has since been canceled, according to the prosecutor’s office.

Netanyahu will convene a security meeting later this morning, said the prime minister’s office.