TEL AVIV – Air raid sirens wailed again in Israel’s largest city, Tel Aviv, on Monday morning as Palestinian militants fired more rockets at the Jewish state and the death toll on both sides rose to more than 1,200, including nine Americans. When Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system fired some of the missiles, explosions sounded, but there was no immediate information about how many may have slipped through.
The latest barrage of rockets, claimed by Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades military unit, came after Israel said it struck hundreds of Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip overnight and as four Israeli combat divisions deployed in the south of the country. About 100,000 Israeli reservists were called up to fight as fighting with Hamas militants continued.
People inspect damage to a building in the southern city of Ashkelon, Israel, on October 9, 2023, after it was hit by a rocket from the Gaza Strip overnight. MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP via Getty Images
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said “warplanes and helicopters, aircraft and artillery attacked over 500 Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist targets in the Gaza Strip on Sunday evening and Monday morning” and claimed to have destroyed tunnels and at least seven “Hamas command centers” in the blockaded Palestinian territory. The IDF said it also attacked a command center of Islamic Jihad, another Iran-backed terror group based in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
“It is taking longer than expected to bring things back to a defensive security situation,” Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht told reporters Monday morning, acknowledging ongoing fighting in southern Israel, three days after Hamas launched its unprecedented attack on Israel Jewish state had started.
Death toll rises as Israel steps up blockade of Gaza
Officials said the Israeli death toll from Hamas’ surprise attack stood at 700 as of Monday morning but was expected to rise further. More than 250 of the dead were people who had attended a music festival near the Gaza border at the time of the attack.
At least nine US citizens were among the dead, a spokesman for the US National Security Council told CBS News on Monday morning. An unspecified number of Americans remained missing.
Israel made it clear that it wanted revenge, and in Gaza retribution fell from heaven. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, the airstrikes had killed more than 590 people as of Monday morning, including at least 91 children. It said about 2,900 others were injured in the attacks.
Palestinians inspect the destruction in a neighborhood heavily damaged by Israeli airstrikes on the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City early October 9, 2023. Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto/Getty
Israel is expected to launch a ground attack in the coming days on Gaza, a small, densely populated region between the Mediterranean to the west and Israel to the north and east.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Monday that he had ordered a tightening of the Gaza blockade: “Nothing is allowed to come in or out. There will be no fuel, no electricity and no food,” he said in a statement. “We fight animals in human form and proceed accordingly.”
CBS News’ Marwan al-Ghoul reported from Gaza City that Israeli airstrikes have been relentless since Saturday. While Israel insists it is targeting Hamas and other terror groups, it has long accused those militants of positioning both fighters and weapons in or near civilian infrastructure.
Targets attacked overnight included houses, apartment buildings and mosques, most without prior warning, al-Ghoul said.
Palestinians inspect the rubble of the Yassin Mosque, destroyed by an Israeli airstrike, in al-Shati refugee camp just outside Gaza City, October 9, 2023. Adel Hana/AP
“I couldn’t sleep last night when the planes bombed the nearby mosque, causing casualties and breaking the windows of my house,” Samar Alyan, who lives in the sprawling al-Shati refugee camp west of Gaza City, told CBS News.
“We don’t know what fate has in store for us,” she said. “Israel takes revenge on civilians.”
The camp houses around 150,000 refugees.
In central Gaza City, schools run by the United Nations humanitarian agency in the Palestinian territories, UNRWA, were full of displaced people seeking safety.
Israeli Infrastructure Minister Israel Katz said in a tweet that he had “ordered to immediately cut off water supplies from Israel to Gaza,” adding that “yesterday, electricity and fuel were cut off to the Palestinian territory, home to about 2 million people “, people were interrupted.
AP
Israel has been locked in a cycle of violence with Palestinian militant groups for decades, but what happened Saturday was unprecedented. Hundreds of Hamas fighters broke through the steel and concrete barrier that Israel has used for decades to contain Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
They stormed into Israel by land, sea and even paragliders, while waves of rockets – more than 3,000 of them – were fired at Israeli cities.
The gunmen from the group, long designated a terrorist organization by the United States and Israel, went on a rampage, killing civilians in the streets, attacking Israeli security forces with lethal force and kidnapping hostages, including women, children and the elderly.
Some of them were paraded through the streets of Gaza – human trophies that Hamas knows it can use as leverage against its enemy.
One of the prisoners is Noa Argamani, a university student who was dragged away on the back of a motorcycle while screaming for help.
“She’s a great person, a sweet child,” her father Yaacov told CBS News. “I can’t believe it.”
Israelis wait for word from prisoners 02:31
The shocked father said he wanted the Israeli government to save his daughter, but “only through peaceful measures.”
“We have to approach it sensitively,” he said. “She [Palestinians] There are also mothers who cry, just like ours.”
“It seems as if Israel has no idea”
For many in Israel on Monday morning, the question was burning as to how the country’s secret services could have failed to detect such a significant attack by Hamas and ruined the plans.
“It seems like Israel has no idea,” former Israeli intelligence officer Gonen Ben Itzhak, who used to recruit spies to infiltrate Hamas, told CBS News. He said Israel – distracted by simmering violence in the other Palestinian territory, the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where it protects Israeli settlers – had let down its guard in Gaza.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if they started killing some of the hostages even on camera,” he said, predicting that Hamas would try to force the Israeli government to negotiate.
But Israeli leaders and military officials did not discuss negotiations Monday morning.
Israel declares war after Hamas launches surprise attack 03:38
While some people are describing the attack as Israel’s 9/11, military spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said the goal was to “ensure that at the end of this war, Hamas will no longer have military capabilities to threaten Israeli civilians, and.” “In addition, we must ensure that Hamas does not rule the Gaza Strip.”
CBS News’ Erin Lyall and Duarte Dias contributed to this report.
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