Blasts have been reported in Gaza after Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered his military to carry out “powerful” air strikes.

Witnesses said they saw explosions and heard tank fire in Gaza City and Deir al Balah.

An Associated Press reporter in Deir al Balah heard tanks firing from an area controlled by the Israeli army, and, in Gaza City, two health officials reported strikes, including near the Shifa hospital.

At least two people were killed, and four others wounded, by a strike on a neighbourhood south of Gaza City, according to Gaza’s Civil Defence.

The announcement of strikes came shortly after Israel said that Hamas had opened fire on its forces in southern Gaza on Tuesday.

Hamas has denied involvement in the attack in the city of Rafah. The militant Palestinian group also said in a statement that it remained committed to the US-backed ceasefire deal.

Mr Netanyahu had also accused Hamas of violating the three-week-old ceasefire in the territory by handing over remains that were of an Israeli hostage who was already recovered.

A statement from the prime minister’s office said: “Following the security consultations, Prime Minister Netanyahu instructed the military echelon to carry out powerful strikes in the Gaza Strip immediately.”

US Vice President JD Vance said the ceasefire, which began on 10 October, was holding, telling reporters: “That doesn’t mean there aren’t going to be little skirmishes here and there.

“We know that Hamas or somebody else within Gaza attacked an (Israeli military) soldier. We expect the Israelis are going to respond, but I think the president’s peace is going to hold despite that.”

Hamas on Tuesday said that it would postpone the planned handover of a body of a hostage it had recovered, claiming violations of the ceasefire by Israel.

In a sign of the fragility of the ceasefire, Israeli troops were shot at in Rafah, and returned fire, according to an Israeli military official.

An Israeli military official told Sky’s Middle East correspondent Adam Parsons that Hamas have “shown their true face”.

The official told him: “Hamas violated the ceasefire once again, carrying out an attack against IDF forces east to the yellow line, an area under Israeli control.

“This is yet another blatant violation of the ceasefire. This comes after Hamas has also shown their true face and the fact that are pretending to not know where the remaining hostages are.”

Hamas said on the Telegram messaging app that any Israeli escalation of attacks in Gaza would hinder search and recovery operations, and delay the return of the bodies of Israeli soldiers.

There are thought to be 13 bodies of hostages still in Gaza.

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Speaking to Sky News, Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said: “The first line of this agreement is that all of our hostages should have been returned on the first day of this agreement.

“They were supposed to give back all of our hostages, and there was supposed to be a ceasefire. There are still 13 of our murdered hostages (in Gaza).

“And secondly, Hamas are firing on our troops. That is not a ceasefire.”

After the ceasefire took effect, all 20 living hostages were freed in exchange for almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, but the remains of the dead have been slow to be repatriated.

Hamas has said there are problems finding them due to a lack of equipment to sift through the devastation and rubble in Gaza.

The search for hostage bodies had been stepped up over the past few days after the arrival of heavy machinery from Egypt.

Bulldozers were working in Khan Younis, and further north in Nuseirat, with Hamas fighters deployed around them.

Some of the bodies are believed to be in Hamas’ network of tunnels below Gaza.

Eleven people have been killed after a plane carrying tourists to a Kenyan safari reserve crashed.

According to officials, the aircraft burst into flames and was reduced to charred wreckage at the hilly and forested area in which it crashed.

The plane had been travelling from Diani Airport, on the coast, to the Maasai Mara National Reserve.

The dead included eight Hungarian passengers, two Germans and the Kenyan pilot. There were no survivors.

Authorities initially said the crash happened at 5:30am local time. Later, the Kenyan transport minister gave the time of the incident as 8:35am.

Kenya’s ministry of roads and transport said the aircraft was destroyed by the impact of the crash and an ensuing fire.

Investigators from the country’s aircraft accident investigation department have been deployed to the site to begin an inquiry, they said.

The department added that the Kenyan government’s “highest priority” remains aviation safety.

In a statement, John Cleave, the chairman of Mombasa Air Safari, said “our hearts and prayers” were with all those affected by the crash.

He wrote that the company had activated its emergency response team and was “fully cooperating” with the relevant authorities, who have already begun investigating.

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“Our primary focus right now is on providing all possible support to the families affected,” Mr Cleave continued, adding that a family assistance team had been established to offer counselling, logistical coordination and any required assistance to the relatives of the victims.

The Maasai Mara National Reserve is a two-hour direct flight from Diani, a popular coastal town known for its sandy beaches.

The reserve attracts a large number of tourists as it features the annual wildebeest migration from the Serengeti in Tanzania.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán wrote on social media on Tuesday that his foreign ministry had been in contact with authorities in Kenya concerning the Hungarian victims of the plane crash.

He said: “What a tragedy! Our sincere condolences to families of the Hungarians who died in the plane crash in Kenya.”

Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) soldiers fled a key city in the hours before the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF) captured its infantry division – leaving around 200,000 civilians trapped, Sky News understands.

The SAF withdrew from military positions in the heart of Al Fashir, the capital of North Darfur, and the symbolic site was captured by the RSF with no resistance.

Insiders told Sky News that the army struck a deal to facilitate safe passage for their soldiers.

Remaining fighters, many of them local resistance forces from Al Fashir, withdrew to the western neighbourhood Daraja Oula, where civilians have been seeking refuge from intensified RSF shelling and drone attacks in recent months.

Summary executions of the senior commanders who stayed behind are being shared on RSF social media channels in violent videos and celebratory posts.

Other videos show queues of unarmed men leaving Al Fashir on foot.

A senior humanitarian source told Sky News that aid workers first confirmed the arrival of army soldiers to displacement centres in the town Tawila, 50km (30 miles) from Al Fashir, on Monday evening in civilian clothing, having surrendered their weapons.

Hundreds of injured civilians and malnourished children have also arrived in Tawila since the fall of Al Fashir.

More than 400 patients checked into the Medicines Sans Frontieres hospital on arrival with malnutrition and trauma wounds since Sunday, according to Medical Team Leader Dr Mouna Hanebali.

“We are seeing a lot of gunshots infected, unstable fractures and wounds infected as well – those are the injuries and torture. We see lots of malnutrition, all of the kids are malnourished, and even most of the adults as well,” says Dr Mouna.

“Yesterday, we had around 70 (patients) under five. All the injured are mainly men, but still we are receiving kids, elderly, women, but the main proportion is young men.”

Ethnically-motivated attacks against civilians are being reported across Al Fashir at the hands of the RSF.

Humanitarian groups are pushing for the evacuation of civilians as civil society groups report increasing attacks on first responders and community volunteers who are currently unable to access the safe passage privileges used by some soldiers to escape the RSF – after enduring 18 months of forced starvation and shelling by the paramilitary group.

After 24 hours of silence from the Sudanese military, SAF commander-in-chief Abdelfattah Burhan confirmed whispers of abandonment.

He said: “Everyone is following what happened in Al Fashir. Certainly, the leadership there, including the security committee, estimated that they should leave the city due to the systematic destruction and killing of civilians it was subjected to.”

Army soldiers have withdrawn from other state capitals in Darfur, including Al Geneina and Nyala. Soldiers told Sky News at the time that those instructions came directly from the military command.

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In Kutum, one of the first towns in North Darfur to fall in June 2023, army soldiers were accused of cutting deals with the RSF who carried out ethnically-motivated attacks against civilians in the aftermath.