Israel says it found 1,500 Hamas militant bodies as warplanes continue to pounds Gaza｜Arab News Japan

• For first time in decades and neighborhoods in Gaza are reduced to rubble
• Israeli military activates 300,000 reservists in a massive mobilization

JERUSALEM: Israel’s military said about 1,500 bodies of Hamas militants were found in Israeli territory as, as it said it had largely gained control in the country’s south and “restored full control” over the border on the fourth day of fighting following an unprecedented surprise attack.

Spokesperson Richard Hecht said no Hamas fighters have crossed into Israel since last night, although infiltrations could still be possible. Israel has previously reported 900 soldiers and civilians killed, and Palestinian authorities have reported about 700 deaths in Gaza and the West Bank.

Warplanes pound Gaza

Israeli warplanes pounded downtown Gaza City, home to Hamas’ centers 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 1,600 lives, as Israel saw gunbattles in the streets of its own towns for the first time in decades and neighborhoods in Gaza were reduced to rubble. Hamas also escalated the conflict, pledging to kill captured Israelis if strikes targeted civilians without warning.

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.

The Israeli military said it had largely gained control in the south and “restored full control” over the border.

Spokesperson Richard Hecht said no Hamas fighters have crossed into Israel since last night, although infiltrations could still be possible.

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 leveled 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.

‘Flee to Egypt’

The Israeli military revised on Tuesday a recommendation by one of its spokespeople that Palestinians fleeing its air strikes in the Gaza Strip head to Egypt, saying in a follow-up statement that the main crossing on that border was currently closed.

Briefing foreign reporters, Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Hecht said he would advise Palestinian refugees to “get out” through the Rafah crossing on Gaza’s southern border with Egypt.

His office then issued a statement. “Clarification: The Rafah crossing was open yesterday, but now it is closed,” it said.

On Monday evening, Egyptian security sources and a witness said operations at Rafah had been disrupted by what they described as a strike on the Gaza side.

“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.”

On Monday, Israel found more bodies from Hamas’ stunning weekend attack into southern Israeli towns. Rescue workers found 100 bodies in the tiny farming community of Be’eri — around 10 percent of its population — after a long hostage standoff with gunmen.

The Israeli military said more than 900 people already have been killed in Israel. In Gaza, more than 680 people have been killed, according to authorities there; Israel says hundreds of Hamas fighters are among them.

Thousands have been wounded on both sides.

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.

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.

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 yearslong Israeli-Palestinian deadlock left by the moribund peace process.

The surprise weekend attack by Hamas left a death toll unseen since the 1973 war with Egypt and Syria. That fomented calls to crush Hamas no matter the cost, rather than continuing to try to bottle it up in Gaza. Israel is run by its most hard-right government ever, dominated by ministers who adamantly reject Palestinian statehood.

Hamas, in turn, says it is ready for a long battle to end an Israeli occupation it says is no longer tolerable.

Desperation has grown among Palestinians, many of whom see nothing to lose under unending Israeli control and increasing settler depredations in the West Bank, the blockade in Gaza and what they see as the world’s apathy.

Attacks by both sides created more scenes of devastation Monday. In Israel’s southern coastal city of Ashkelon, a man holding a crutch with one hand and an older boy with the other joined evacuees being shepherded from a street after a rocket blew out the front of a house.

In Gaza, Palestinians passed the bodies of the dead through dense crowds of men in the rubble in the Jebaliya refugee camp.

Early Monday evening, the sound of explosions echoed over Jerusalem when a volley of rockets fired from Gaza hit two neighborhoods — a sign of Hamas’s reach. Israeli media said seven were wounded.

Israeli warplanes carried out an intense bombardment of Rimal, a residential and commercial district of central Gaza City, after issuing warnings for residents to evacuate. Amid continuous explosions, the building housing the headquarters of the Palestinian Telecommunications Company was destroyed.

Israeli airstrikes on Gaza have razed 790 housing units and severely damaged 5,330, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said early Tuesday. Damage to three water and sanitation sites have cut off services to 400,000.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered a “complete siege” on Gaza, saying authorities would cut electricity and block the entry of food and fuel.

Tens of thousands of Gaza residents continued to flee. The UN said Tuesday that more than 187,000 of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have left their homes — the most since a 2014 air and ground offensive by Israel uprooted about 400,000.

UNRWA, the UN agencies for Palestinian refugees, is sheltering more than 137,000 people in schools across the territory. Families have taken in some 41,000 others.

In the southern Gaza city of Rafah, an Israeli airstrike early Monday killed 19 people, including women and children, said Talat Barhoum, a doctor at the local Al-Najjar Hospital.

After breaking through Israeli barriers with explosives at daybreak Saturday, an estimated 1,000 Hamas gunmen rampaged for hours, gunning down civilians and snatching people in towns, along highways and at a techno music festival attended by thousands in the desert. Palestinian militants have also launched around 4,400 rockets at Israel, according to the military.