Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Israelis on Sunday that they had “entered a long and difficult war” that has already left hundreds dead on both sides, the day after a spectacular offensive from Gaza by the Palestinian Hamas.
The Israeli army, for its part, announced on Sunday morning that it had used a drone to attack a Lebanese “Hezbollah terror infrastructure” in the border area, after Hezbollah said it had fired “a large number of grenades and guided missiles” into the contested sector Chebaa Farms.
“The first phase is coming to an end […] by eliminating the vast majority of enemy forces that have infiltrated our territory,” the head of government said in a pre-dawn statement on the Hamas offensive.
Army airstrikes continued overnight into the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian territory under Hamas control, from where shelling continued against Israel. Fighting continued on the ground between Israeli forces and armed elements of this Islamist movement, which had entered Israel since the previous day.
The siege of the police station in the town of Sderot on the Gaza border, where Hamas gunmen had holed up, ended on Sunday morning, police said in a statement: Police and army special forces “neutralized ten armed terrorists, “the…” were at the police station.
On Saturday morning, Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, firing thousands of rockets from the Gaza Strip and infiltrating hundreds of militants into Israeli territory, where it also captured significant numbers of civilians and soldiers. The Israeli online news site Ynet gives “an estimate of around a hundred people.” […] kidnapped,” although authorities have not yet provided any figures.
Relatives not found
Israelis searching for their untraceable relatives were questioned repeatedly on Israeli radio and television on Sunday. Some said they had seen them in videos of Hamas hostages in Gaza circulating on social media. The media on Sunday morning also listed the names of the Israelis killed and identified on Saturday, including children and teenagers.
The Israeli army published on a special website the identities of 26 soldiers, men and women, killed since Saturday.
Taking advantage of the element of surprise, Hamas fighters aboard vehicles, boats and even motorized paragliders took advantage of the imposing barrier Israel had erected around the Gaza Strip to attack military positions or civilians on the streets.
It is the deadliest escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in decades.
According to the army, the fighting left “more than 200 dead” and “more than 1,000 injured” on the Israeli side, accusing Hamas of “massacring civilians” even in their homes.
In the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli army has carried out dozens of reprisal air strikes since Saturday, Hamas counted 256 dead and 1,788 injured.
“Unprecedented”
“What happened today is unprecedented in Israel,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted in a televised address. “We will turn all these places where Hamas is hiding (…) into ruins.”
“We are on the verge of a great victory,” said Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas.
Hostilities began at dawn on Saturday with a barrage of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip into neighboring Israeli cities and as far away as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
“I saw a lot of corpses,” Israeli Shlomi told AFP next to covered corpses on a road near Kibbutz Gevim in the south of the country.
On Saturday evening, the Israeli army reported that “hundreds” of intruders were still on Israeli soil following a “powerful ground invasion.”
This escalation comes fifty years and one day after the start of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, which caught Israel by surprise, resulted in the deaths of 2,600 Israelis and left at least 9,500 dead and missing on the Arab side in three weeks of fighting. .
“Saber” versus “Flood”
The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, claimed in a video that they had “captured several enemy soldiers,” and the al-Quds Brigades, the military branch of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, also said they had “numerous soldiers” were detained. Israeli.
The army spokesman confirmed that “Israeli soldiers and civilians” had been kidnapped, without giving numbers.
Al-Qassam Brigades commander Mohammad Deif announced that he had launched an operation called “Al-Aqsa Flood” against Israel and fired more than “5,000 rockets” to “put an end to all crimes of the occupation “.
The Israeli army, for its part, counted more than 3,000 shots. It launched Operation Iron Sabers and conducted airstrikes on the Palestinian enclave. Several buildings that were considered Hamas “command centers” were destroyed.
Doctors Without Borders said a strike hit a hospital in the enclave, causing several deaths.
The UN has identified 20,000 displaced Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Mr Netanyahu announced the suspension of deliveries of electricity, food and goods from Israel to this Palestinian territory, which has been under a strict Israeli blockade since Hamas took control there in 2007.
The conflict causes disruption at Tel Aviv airport and schools will remain closed on Sunday, the start of the week in Israel.
This outbreak of violence was condemned by many governments. US President Joe Biden pledged his “unwavering support” to Israel on Saturday.
The United Nations said it had convened an emergency Security Council meeting on the Middle East for Sunday evening.
Iran, for its part, welcomed the offensive. “We support this proud operation,” announced Revolutionary Guard General Yahya Rahim-Safavi, quoted by the ISNA agency.