Trump threatens to ‘go in and kill’ Hamas if group doesn’t stop killing in Gaza

By Adam Cancryn, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump on Thursday warned that if Hamas keeps killing people in Gaza, “we will have no choice but to go in and kill them,” marking a sharp escalation of his rhetoric against the group as he tries to maintain a ceasefire in its conflict with Israel.

The threat – just three days after the deal was signed in the Middle East – came amid reports that Hamas fighters have used the truce to quickly and violently reassert control over the Gaza Strip, targeting Palestinians who they deemed to have collaborated with Israeli forces during the war.

“If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the Deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

Trump later clarified that US forces would not be involved in the renewed offensive he had threatened.

“It’s not going to be us, we won’t have to,” he said in the Oval Office Thursday. “There are people very close, very nearby that will go and they’ll do the trick very easily, but under our auspices.”

Trump had previously downplayed the prospect that US forces would need to get involved in peacekeeping as negotiators try to make headway on a permanent end to the war.

The president’s warning nevertheless represented an abrupt shift from his far more optimistic tone in the immediate aftermath of the ceasefire agreement, which he first announced last week. At one point, he declared the war was effectively “over.” Trump had also shrugged off early reports that Hamas was cracking down on so-called gangs in the Palestinian territory, even as footage emerged of an apparent public execution.

“They did take out a couple of gangs that were very bad,” Trump said on Tuesday. “And that didn’t bother me much, to be honest with you. That’s OK.”

Yet over the last 24 hours, the president has suggested in increasingly stern language that he might allow Israel to resume fighting if Hamas does not hold up its end of the deal, telling CNN’s Jake Tapper on Wednesday that the war would restart “as soon as I say the word.”

Israel has already accused Hamas of breaking the agreement over the slow return of deceased hostages. And though Trump initially expressed ambivalence toward Hamas’ post-ceasefire attacks on Palestinians, he also warned that the group would ultimately have to disarm or “we will disarm them.”

“Israel will return to those streets as soon as I say the word,” Trump told Tapper in a brief telephone call. “If Israel could go in and knock the crap out of them, they’d do that.”

Trump spoke Thursday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to an Iraeli source, but the nature of the conversation could not immediately be learned. In the Oval Office after that conversation, he expressed confidence the deal would hold.

“We know that we have a commitment from them and I assume they’re going to honor their commitment,” he said of Hamas. “If they don’t behave, we’ll take care of it.”

This story has been updated with additional reporting.

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CNN’s Oren Liebermann contributed to this report.