Tel Aviv, Israel –
The Israeli government officially declared war on Sunday, greenlighting “significant military action” in retaliation for Hamas’s surprise attack from the Gaza Strip. The conflict has killed more than 900 people on both sides, with more than 900 people dead and thousands injured, and even more intense fighting is expected in the future.
More than 24 hours after Hamas launched its unprecedented invasion from Gaza, Israeli forces were still trying to crush the last groups of fighters holed up in several towns in southern Israel. At least 600 people were reportedly killed in Israel, a staggering toll on a scale the country has not seen in decades, and more than 300 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip. Died.
Authorities are still trying to determine how many civilians and soldiers were captured by Hamas fighters and brought back to Gaza during the unrest. It is known from videos and witnesses that the prisoners include women, children and the elderly.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on ABC’s “This Week” that as many as 1,000 Hamas fighters were involved in the attack. The numbers underscored the extent of planning by the extremist groups that control Gaza. The gunmen rampaged for hours, opening fire on civilians in towns, along highways and at a techno music festival in the desert near Gaza.
Civilians on both sides had already paid a high price.
Lines of Israelis snaked outside police stations in central Israel, offering DNA samples and other means that could help identify missing family members. Israeli television news aired report after report of weeping relatives of prisoners of war and missing Israelis pleading for help and information.
In Gaza, a small enclave of 2.3 million people that has been sealed off by an Israeli and Egyptian blockade for 16 years since Hamas took over, residents feared an escalating onslaught. Many residential buildings were destroyed by the Israeli attack. More than 20,000 people who fled their homes packed into schools run by the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency, UNWRA, the agency said.
Several Israeli media outlets, citing rescue workers, reported that at least 600 people were killed in Israel, including 44 soldiers. The Gaza Ministry of Health said 313 people were killed in the area, including 20 children. Approximately 2,000 people were injured on both sides. Israeli officials said security forces had killed 400 militants and captured dozens more.
A gunfight with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah broke out in northern Israel, raising concerns that the conflict could escalate. Hezbollah on Sunday fired dozens of rockets and artillery shells at three Israeli military positions in disputed territory along the border, and the Israeli military counterattacked using armed drones. Two children suffered minor injuries from broken glass on the Lebanese side, the nearby Marjayoun Hospital said.
The Israeli military said the situation had calmed down since the exchange.
Hezbollah, backed by Iran, is estimated to have tens of thousands of rockets at its disposal. Since its brutal war with Israel in 2006, Hezbollah has sat on the sidelines as fighting between Israel and Hamas erupts. But if the destruction in Gaza escalates, it may feel pressure to intervene.
A key question was whether Israel would launch a ground offensive on Gaza, a step that has resulted in heavy casualties in the past.
Yohanan Plesner, director of the Israel Democracy Institute, a local think tank, said the declaration of war announced by Israel’s Security Cabinet was largely symbolic. But this “suggests that the government believes we are entering an era of longer, more intense and significant wars.”
For the past four decades, Israel has carried out large-scale military operations in Lebanon and Gaza under the guise of war, but without a formal declaration.
The Security Cabinet also approved “significant military measures.” The steps are not clear, but the declaration is expected to give broad powers to the military and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on state television on Saturday that Hamas “will pay an unprecedented price.” He further warned that “this war will take time. It will be difficult.”
His office said in a statement that the goal is to destroy Hamas’s “military power and governance capabilities” to the point that it cannot threaten Israelis “for many years.”
The Israeli public remained reeling from the scale, ferocity, and surprise of the Hamas attack. The group’s fighters breached the Israeli security fence surrounding the Gaza Strip early Saturday morning. They traveled to up to 22 nearby Israeli communities using motorcycles, pickup trucks, even paragliders and coastal speedboats.
The high death toll and slow response to the onslaught point to a major failure of the intelligence services, which have eyes and ears everywhere in the small, densely populated territory that Israel has controlled for decades. This has shaken up this long-held perception.
Hamas said it continued sending troops and equipment to southern Israel overnight. Israeli Maj. Gen. Daniel Hagari told reporters on Sunday that fighting continued in parts of the south and that insurgents were still holding hostages in some places. The Israeli military said it was evacuating at least five towns near Gaza.
“We will investigate every community until we have killed all the terrorists in Israeli territory,” Hagari said. In Gaza, “every terrorist at home, every commander at home will come under Israeli shelling. It will escalate further in the next few hours.”
Israel has so far attacked 426 targets in the Gaza Strip, the military announced on Sunday. On Saturday night, much of the region’s population was plunged into darkness after Israel cut off electricity and announced it would no longer supply power, fuel and other goods to the region.
A woman taking shelter at a UNWRA school in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan district described how she left her home in the middle of the night to board a plane in a panic. Israeli forces announced over loudspeakers that people should leave.
“We didn’t know where to go,” she said. “It was a miracle that I made it to school because there was no transportation.”
The presence of hostages in Gaza complicates Israel’s response. Hamas officials have said they will seek the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners, and Israel has a history of highly lopsided negotiations to bring captured Israelis home.
The military acknowledged on Saturday that a “significant” number of Israelis had been abducted, but did not give an exact number.
Egyptian officials say Israel has asked Cairo for help to ensure the safety of the hostages, and Egypt’s intelligence chief has contacted Hamas and a smaller, more radical Islamic jihadist group that also took part in the invasion for information. He said he took it. Egypt has acted as an intermediary between the two countries many times in the past.
The official insisted that Palestinian leaders did not yet have a “full picture” of the number of hostages, but said those taken to Gaza had been taken to “safe locations” throughout the territory. Ta.
“It’s clear that they have a huge number of people in the dozens,” said the official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.
Egypt also held talks with both countries about a possible ceasefire, but the official said Israel was not open to a ceasefire “at this stage.”
In Iran, which has long supported Hamas and other extremist groups, senior officials have openly praised the invasion. President Ebrahim Raisi spoke by phone with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Islamic Jihad leader Ziad al-Nahla, state news agency IRNA reported on Sunday.
Mohammed Deif, the shadow leader of Hamas’ military wing, said the attack, dubbed Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, was the latest in a series of recent incidents that have threatened Israel’s 16-year blockade of Gaza. He said that it was a countermeasure against. -Tensions in Palestine reach climax.
Israel’s far-right government has stepped up settlement construction in the occupied West Bank over the past year. Violence by Israeli settlers has driven hundreds of Palestinians from their homes, and tensions are high around Jerusalem’s holy Al-Aqsa Mosque.
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Shurafa reported from Gaza City. Associated Press writers Isabel Debre, Julia Frankel and Joseph Federman in Jerusalem; Issam Adwan of Rafah, Gaza Strip. Bassem Mourou in Beirut, Samy Magdy in Cairo and Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.
