Latest: Israel bombards Gaza as the dead toll on both sides rises.
The casualty toll from five days of fierce warfare between Hamas and Israel increased substantially overnight, as Israel continued to strike Gaza on Wednesday after collecting the dead from the last neighborhoods near the border where Palestinian terrorists had been holed up.
In Israel, the death toll from Saturday's surprise cross-border onslaught by Hamas terrorists surpassed 1,200, making it the bloodiest attack in the country's 75-year history, while Gaza officials reported more than 900 killed as Israel hammered the region with air strikes.
Hamas reported two of its top executives were killed, while Israel's military said 1,500 Hamas infiltrators had been slain.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned Israel’s military reaction to Saturday’s strike is simply the start of a continuous fight to eliminate the Islamist group and “change the Middle East”.
Fears of a regional conflict have risen in the run-up to an expected Israeli ground incursion into Gaza.
According to a Hamas government source, at least 30 people were killed and hundreds were injured overnight when Israel blasted the Gaza Strip with hundreds of air strikes.
According to a university spokesperson, the strikes destroyed numerous facilities at the Hamas-linked Islamic University in Gaza City.
The Israeli military confirmed it had hit dozens of Hamas targets during the night.
It said fighter jets destroyed “advanced detection systems” that Hamas used to spot military aircraft.
They also hit 80 Hamas targets in the Beit Hanoun area of the northeastern Gaza Strip, including two bank branches used by the Islamist group to “fund terrorism” in the enclave, the military said.
In response to Saturday’s attack, Israel imposed a “total siege” on Gaza, suspending supplies of food, water, electricity and fuel to the already blockaded enclave.
Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007, is threatening to execute hostages kidnapped in Israel, including young people captured during a music festival where around 270 died.
– ‘Discovering bodies’ –
Israel has been left reeling by Hamas’s unprecedented ground, air and sea assault, likening it to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
In announcing Israel’s latest death toll on Wednesday morning, army spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus said the figure was rising not because of the ongoing fighting, but because “we are discovering bodies of dead Israelis in the various communities that Hamas infiltrated and where they conducted their massacres”.
During Saturday’s attack, Hamas gunmen killed more than 100 people in the kibbutz of Beeri alone, said Moti Bukjin, a volunteer with the charity Zaka.
US President Joe Biden condemned the Hamas attacks as “sheer evil”, and Netanyahu said the militants committed “savagery never seen since the Holocaust”, including the beheading of soldiers.
Condemnation from Western leaders contrasted with some pro-Palestinian demonstrations in support of “resistance” to Israel.
“My entire life, I have seen Israel kill us, confiscate our lands and arrest our children,” said Farah al-Saadi, 52, a coffee vendor from Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank who praised the Hamas assault.
The Israeli army has called up 300,000 reservists and massed tanks and other heavy armour both near Gaza and on the northern border with Lebanon.
The military said its forces had dislodged holdout Hamas fighters from more than a dozen communities near the border and were largely back in control.
But late Tuesday, in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, troops backed by helicopters and drones exchanged fire with several militants, leaving three fighters dead, the army said.
On Thursday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is scheduled to visit Israel.
Brazil, Cambodia, Canada, Ireland, Mexico, Nepal, Panama, Paraguay, Russia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Ukraine have all reported citizens dead, kidnapped, or missing.
On Monday, Hamas threatened to execute its hostages if Israel launched an unannounced strike on a civilian target in Gaza. The threat was described by French President Emmanuel Macron as "unacceptable blackmail."
