Israel retakes Gaza border areas as war death toll mounts
Israel said it recaptured Gaza border areas
from Hamas militants as the war's death toll passed 3,000 on Tuesday, the
fourth day of fierce fighting since the Islamists launched a surprise attack.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned
Israel's military campaign following Saturday's onslaught is only the start of
a sustained war to destroy Hamas and "change the Middle East".
Fears of a regional conflagration have surged
ahead of an expected Israeli ground incursion into Gaza, the crowded,
impoverished enclave from where Hamas launched its land, air and sea attack on
the Jewish Sabbath.
The death toll in Israel has surged above 900
from the worst attack in the country's 75-year history, while Gaza officials
have reported 765 people killed so far, and Israel's army said the bodies of
roughly 1,500 militants had been found.
Hamas gunmen killed more than 100 people in
the kibbutz of Beeri alone, said Moti Bukjin, a volunteer with the charity Zaka
that recovers bodies in accordance with Jewish law.
Netanyahu compared the large-scale slaughter
of Israeli civilians to atrocities committed by the Islamic State group, also
known as ISIS, when they controlled vast swathes of Syria and Iraq.
"Hamas terrorists bound, burned and
executed children," Netanyahu said in a televised address to the grieving
nation late Monday. "They are savages. Hamas is ISIS."
The veteran leader at the helm of Israel's
hard-right coalition also called for an "emergency government of national
unity" after his administration's proposal for judicial reforms split the
nation and even its military this year.
The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas's
armed wing, began its operation saying it aimed to "end all the crimes of
the occupation (Israel). Their time for rampaging without being held accountable
is over."
The Israeli army has called up 300,000
reservists for its "Swords of Iron" campaign and massed tanks and
other heavy armour both near Gaza and on the northern border with Lebanon,
where exchanges of fire continued.
The military said its forces had largely
reclaimed the embattled south and the border around Gaza, and dislodged holdout
Hamas fighters from more than a dozen towns and kibbutzim.
"Around 1,500 bodies of Hamas (fighters)
have been found in Israel around the Gaza Strip," said army spokesman
Richard Hecht, adding security forces had "more or less restored control
over the border" with the enclave.
Key ally the United States -- which reported
11 of its own citizens killed, and more missing -- said it was taking seriously
Hamas threats to execute hostages.
The White House said President Joe Biden and
Vice President Kamala Harris were to speak with Netanyahu Tuesday morning.
European Union foreign ministers were to hold
an emergency meeting. Ahead of their talks, German Foreign Minister Annalena
Baerbock called on the Palestinian Authority, which has partial administrative
control in the West Bank, to "distance yourself from this terror,"
after the Hamas assault.
Western powers and many other nations have
reported citizens killed, abducted or missing. These include: Brazil, Cambodia,
Canada, Ireland, Mexico, Nepal, Panama, Paraguay, Russia, Sri Lanka, Thailand
and Ukraine.
Hamas has held around 150 hostages since its
ground incursion, among them children, elderly and young people who were
captured at a music festival where around 270 died.
On Monday, Hamas warned it would start
killing hostages every time Israel launches a strike on a civilian target in
Gaza without warning.
Fear and chaos reigned among the 2.3 million
Palestinians living in the coastal territory that has been hammered by
thousands of Israeli bombs.
For the third time in 24 hours an Israeli air
strike hit Gaza's Rafah border crossing with Egypt, Gaza's only one not
controlled by Israel, an AFP photographer and an NGO said.
A distraught man was seen carrying the
shrouded body of a child in Khan Yunis, in the south of the enclave, where
other remains were piled onto the back of pickup trucks.
There were similar scenes in the kibbutz of
Kfar Aza, where Israeli soldiers carried away the dead in black body bags.
The tension was felt on the deserted streets
of Jerusalem, after it was targeted by Hamas rocket fire.
"Israeli people they are scared of the
Arabs and the Arabs are scared of the Jews... everybody is scared of each
other," said Ahmed Karkash, a shop owner in the Old City.
In Gaza City, aerial footage shot by AFP
showed the scale of the destruction, with entire building blocks reduced to
rubble.
One resident, Muhammad Najib, 70, said he
fled his home Monday after receiving an Israeli warning to evacuate and
returned on Tuesday to a "terrifying scene" in his Al-Rimal
neighbourhood.
"The entire area was devastated, a large
number of houses were completely destroyed," he said. "What is the
fault of the children and the women?"
Four Palestinian journalists were killed in
Israeli air strikes on Gaza City, media unions and officials said.
Israel on Monday imposed a total siege on
Gaza, which it has blockaded for years, cutting off the water supply, food,
electricity and other essential supplies.
UN human rights chief Volker Turk said
Tuesday that imposing "sieges that endanger the lives of civilians by
depriving them of goods essential for their survival is prohibited under
international humanitarian law".
The United Nations said more than 187,500
people had been displaced inside the Gaza Strip, with most taking shelter in UN
schools.
Israel has been left reeling by Hamas's
unprecedented ground, air and sea assault that began with thousands of rockets,
likening it to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
In the aftermath, soldiers who were on guard
duty along the hi-tech security barrier around the Gaza Strip have recounted
how the massive attack began with an effort to cripple observation cameras and
communications.
"They took us by surprise and we weren't
ready for it... and (there was) no intelligence at all," a lookout soldier
said in testimony posted on Instagram.
Washington has pledged to send more munitions
and military equipment to back Israel. It deployed an aircraft carrier group to
the eastern Mediterranean, amid fears of a wider war.
The White House said there was no intention
to put US boots on the ground, while also condemning the "ISIS-level
savagery" of the Hamas attack.
Israel faced the threat of a multi-front war
after three days of clashes with militants from the Iran-backed Hezbollah
movement on the northern border with Lebanon
Mourners in the southern Lebanese village of
Khirbet Selm carried two caskets, draped in yellow Hezbollah flags, with the
bodies of two fighters it said were killed in Israeli strikes a day earlier. A
third fighter was also killed, the Iran-backed group said.
On Tuesday, a fresh salvo of rockets was
fired from south Lebanon towards Israel, Lebanese state media said. Israel
retaliated with artillery fire, its army said.
"It's like a state of war," said
Yaakov Regev, sipping coffee at a petrol station in northern Israel, a few
kilometres from the Lebanon border.
Unrest has also surged in the
Israeli-occupied West Bank, where 15 Palestinians have been killed since
Saturday.
Iran -- openly committed to Israel's
destruction -- has praised the Hamas attack but repeatedly denied playing any
role in it.
Global powers and regional governments
including Egypt, Turkey and Gulf states have engaged in frantic diplomacy
seeking to prevent any further escalation.
Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler Crown Prince
Mohammed bin Salman told Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas that the kingdom
was working to ensure the conflict does not spread across the region, state
media said.
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