The IDF announced the resumption of the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip on Sunday evening after a deadly attack on troops in the southern Gaza Strip in the morning, and a subsequent wave of retaliatory Israeli strikes had threatened to shatter the fragile truce.

Washington was said to have scrambled to intervene to prevent the US-brokered ceasefire from falling apart, just over a week after it came into effect on October 10.

Two Israeli soldiers — Maj. Yaniv Kula, 26, and Staff Sgt. Itay Yavetz — were killed and three others were wounded when Palestinian terror operatives launched an attack on troops in the Rafah area on Sunday morning. The IDF blamed Hamas for the attack, and launched a wave of intense strikes against the terror group in response.

On Sunday night, however, the military announced that, “in accordance with the directive of the political echelon, and after a series of significant strikes, the IDF has begun renewed enforcement of the ceasefire following its violation by the Hamas terror organization.”

It stressed that Israel would “continue to uphold the ceasefire agreement and will respond forcefully to any violation.”

Israel’s announcement that it would return to upholding the truce came after the military carried out strikes against 20 targets in Gaza, which the Hamas-run civil defense agency said killed 45 people, although the figures could not be verified and did not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held consultations with Defense Minister Israel Katz and other senior security officials in the wake of the deadly attack on troops in Rafah, and decided that Israel would respond “fiercely” to the incident, while still maintaining the necessary momentum to secure the return of the remaining slain hostages from Gaza under the first phase of Washington’s ceasefire framework, Channel 12 reported.

“Israel does not want to bring about the collapse of the ceasefire… There is simply a straightforward equation of a violation and a response — and this will continue as long as Hamas keeps violating the agreement,” a security official told the network that

The same official also warned that the area between the so-called Yellow Line — to which the military withdrew under the terms of the current ceasefire — and the Egyptian border is “a hotspot for potential escalation.”

“It is ostensibly under Israeli control, but [in underground tunnels that remain operative] Hamas terrorists are hiding — trying to harass Israeli forces under cover of the ceasefire, even without explicit orders from their commanders,” the official said.

Meanwhile, in Washington, officials within the administration of US President Donald Trump were working to prevent the flare-up of violence from collapsing the ceasefire entirely, the Axios news outlet

© The Times of Israel