A new barrage of airstrikes on Gaza was under way on Tuesday as Israel announced it had resealed its border — and preparations continued for its anticipated ground offensive.
The latest onslaught followed 200 airstrikes overnight and came as the Israeli military vowed that there would be “nowhere to hide” for Hamas terrorists inside Gaza.
Photographs showed flattened buildings with apartment blocks, a telecoms headquarters, a mosque and hospitals among the sites said to have been hit.
The Israeli military also disclosed that the bodies of around 1,500 Hamas militants killed during fighting inside Israel had been recovered, as videos circulated of atrocities involving the slaughter of Israelis taken captive during the surprise weekend attack.
Meanwhile, preparations continued for Israel’s widely anticipated ground offensive with military spokesman Lt-Col Richard Hecht disclosing that 35 battalions of its army are now stationed close to Gaza.
He said the military was “building infrastructure for future operations” after Monday’s warning from Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the airstrikes are “just the beginning” of his country’s response to Hamas’s weekend assault.
The military action came as:
- Families in Israel and other countries, including Britain, waited anxiously to see if Hamas’s military wing will begin carrying out its threat to execute hostages.
- Fears remained that Hamas fighters are still hidden in Israel and others may still be able to enter through tunnels.
- Air raid sirens sounded again in southern Israel and Israel’s air force said it was investigating a possible “aerial incursion” in the north of the country.
- Authorities in Gaza said 140 children were among more than 700 people killed so far in retaliatory airstrikes by Israel.
- Israeli authorities said that as well as resealing its border fence with Gaza it had also closed the Rafah crossing into Egypt to shut off the territory completely.
- Police in London made three arrests after clashes following protests outside the Israeli embassy and elsewhere in the capital.
- The Israeli Defence Forces posted an image of 65 people it said were “just some of the fallen soldiers in the war against Hamas” and paid tribute to their sacrifice.
- The United Nations called for a humanitarian corridor to be opened into Gaza and announced that 187,518 Palestinians had already been displaced so far by the conflict.
- Foreign Secretary James Cleverly warned that Hamas “habitually embeds its military and terrorist operations within civilian communities” as he reiterated Government support for Israel.
Tuesday’s developments came as Hamas, which has threatened to execute one of the estimated 100 or more hostages taken into Gaza every time Israel fails to give adequate warning to civilians about an airstrike, said it was prepared for a long war.
Ali Barakeh, a member of the group’s exiled leadership in Beirut, said it had an arsenal of rockets that will last a long time.
“We have prepared well for this war and to deal with all scenarios, even the scenario of the long war,” he said, adding that Hamas was shocked by the ease with which had been able to penetrate Israel.
“We were surprised by this great collapse. We were planning to make some gains and take prisoners to exchange them. This army [Israel’s] was a paper tiger.”
Mr Barakeh said Hamas would seek to use the hostages, who include women, children and the disabled, to secure the release of prisoners in Israeli jails and even some Palestinians imprisoned in the US.
He also claimed that allies such as Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah “will join the battle if Gaza is subjected to a war of annihilation”, in a warning that will intensify fears of a wider conflagration.
The threats came as Mr Cleverly accused Hamas of deliberately using civilians as human shields in an echo of Israeli warnings on Tuesday that the militants are “holding the people of Gaza hostage” by basing ammunition stores below “mosques, kindergartens, schools and UN facilities” and “entrenching their terrorism within [the] civilian population.”
Meanwhile, the United Nations said 17 Palestinians had been killed in the West Bank in other clashes with Israeli forces since Saturday’s attack by Hamas, which has so far led to the death of around 900 people in Israel, including citizens of other countries including Britain, the US, France and Canada.
The death toll is expected to rise because of the severity of injuries suffered after Hamas fighters massacred civilians, including women, children and the elderly, and attacked a music festival.
There has been widespread international condemnation of the murders and hostage taking, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying today that the US “reaffirmed our efforts to secure the immediate release of all hostages”.
President Joe Biden, who has confirmed the death of 11 US nationals, has already pledged he will “ensure Israel has what it needs to defend itself and its people”.
