Jerusalem : Israeli warplanes pounded downtown Gaza City, home to Hamas' centres of government, with relentless bombardments into early Tuesday, after Israel's prime minister vowed retaliation against the Islamic militant group that would reverberate for generations.
The 4-day-old war has already claimed at least 1,600 lives, as Israel saw gun battles in the streets of its own towns for the first time in decades and neighbourhoods in Gaza were reduced to rubble. Hamas also escalated the conflict, pledging to kill captured Israelis if strikes targeted civilians without warning.
Israel's military said it had found the bodies of roughly 1,500 Hamas militants in Israeli territory as it gained effective control in the south and restored full control over the border. It was not immediately clear if those numbers overlapped with deaths previously reported by Palestinian authorities. Israel said that Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza are holding more than 150 soldiers and civilians snatched from inside Israel after the attack caught its vaunted military and intelligence apparatus completely off guard.
As the Israeli military activated 300,000 reservists in a massive mobilization, a major question was whether it will launch a ground assault into the tiny Mediterranean coastal territory. The last ground assault was in 2014.
Thousands of Israelis were evacuated from more than a dozen towns near Gaza, and tanks and drones were deployed to guard breaches in the Gaza border fence against new incursions. In Gaza, tens of thousands fled their homes as airstrikes levelled buildings. The moves, along with Israel's formal declaration of war on Sunday, pointed to Israel increasingly shifting to the offensive against Hamas, threatening greater destruction in the densely populated, impoverished Gaza Strip.
We have only started striking Hamas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a nationally televised address. What we will do to our enemies in the coming days will reverberate with them for generations. The Israeli military said it struck hundreds of Hamas targets in Gaza's City Rimal neighbourhood, which is home to Hamas' ministries and governing buildings, overnight.
The massive devastation in Rimal signalled what could be a new Israeli tactic in Gaza: warning civilians to leave certain areas and then hitting those areas with airstrikes of unprecedented intensity. The heavy bombardment began in areas of Gaza bordering Israel over the weekend, and overnight shifted to the centre of Gaza City. If these types of bombardments continue, Gaza civilians will have fewer and fewer places to shelter as more neighbourhoods become uninhabitable.
In a briefing Tuesday, Hecht suggested Palestinians should try to leave through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, but the military later said the crossing was closed. Asked if Israel considered Hamas' civil government, such as parliament and ministries, legitimate targets, Hecht said if there's a gunman firing rockets from there, it turns into a military target.
In response to Israel's aerial attacks, the spokesman of Hamas' armed wing, Abu Obeida, said Monday night that the group will kill one Israeli civilian captive any time Israel targets civilians in their homes in Gaza without prior warning. Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen warned Hamas against harming any of the hostages, saying, This war crime will not be forgiven. Netanyahu appointed a former military commander to manage the hostage and missing persons crisis.
The Israeli military said more than 900 people already have been killed in Israel. In Gaza and the West Bank, 704 people have been killed, according to authorities there; Israel says hundreds of Hamas fighters are among them. Thousands have been wounded on both sides. Israel and Hamas have had repeated conflicts in past years, often sparked by tensions around a Jerusalem holy site. This time, the context has become potentially more explosive. Both sides talk of shattering with violence a years long Israeli-Palestinian deadlock left by the moribund peace process.
