The Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said on Tuesday that the military was “ready and determined” for the next stage in the war and was awaiting political instruction. In a social media post, the Israel Defence Force claims to have struck “over 400 terrorist targets in the past 24 hours” in what is described as “a wide-scale operation to dismantle Hamas’s terrorist capabilities”.
At least 5,791 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry. It said the number included 2,360 children, and it said 704 Palestinians had been killed in the previous 24 hours. A spokesperson for the ministry, Ashraf al-Qidra, said they had received 1,550 reports of missing people, including 870 children, and suggested that those missing could still be under the rubble of collapsed buildings. The claims have not been independently verified.
Hamas released two more hostages from Gaza on Monday on “humanitarian and poor health grounds”. Nurit Cooper, also known as Nurit Yitzhak, 79, and Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, were kidnapped along with their husbands from the Nir Oz kibbutz near the Gaza border on 7 October. They were the third and fourth hostages to be released.
Lifshitz described her ordeal on Tuesday at a press conference in a Tel Aviv hospital. She told reporters she had “been through hell” after being captured by Hamas fighters on motorbikes and beaten with sticks and forced to walk. She went on to describe conditions in the tunnels where she had been held, where she said she said people treated her “gently” and “looked after our needs”. The captives were fed and they slept on mattresses. She said there were doctors and paramedics there to tend to wounds. She was critical of Israel’s military for not taking the threat of Hamas seriously enough before the attack.
