As the war’s casualty toll surpassed 3,000 on Tuesday, the fourth day of intense combat since the Islamists launched a surprise onslaught, Israel claimed to have reclaimed Gaza border regions from Hamas militants. Israel’s military offensive after Saturday’s assault, according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is only the beginning of a protracted conflict to eliminate Hamas and “change the Middle East”.
In anticipation of an imminent Israeli ground invasion into Gaza, the packed territory from which Hamas launched its land, air, and sea offensive on the Jewish Sabbath, worries of a regional conflagration have increased. In contrast to Gaza’s official death toll of 765, Israel’s death toll from the bloodiest strike in the nation’s 75-year history has risen to 900.
According to Moti Bukjin, a volunteer with the organization Zaka that retrieves remains in line with Jewish law, Hamas militants murdered around 100 individuals in the kibbutz of Beeri alone. “They shot everyone,” he said to AFP. “They murdered in cold blood children, babies, old people — everyone.”
Benjamin Netanyahu claims that “Hamas is ISIS”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu compared the systematic killing of citizens in his country to the crimes carried out by the Islamic State, commonly known as ISIS, when it ruled significant portions of Syria and Iraq.
In a furious televised speech to the bereaved country late Monday, PM Netanyahu declared, “Hamas terrorists bound, burned, and executed children.” They are wild animals. ISIS is Hamas. A “emergency government of national unity” was also requested by the seasoned figurehead of Israel’s hard-right coalition, which has endured years of political unrest and acrimonious social differences.
For its “Swords of Iron” operation, the Israeli army has activated 300,000 reservists and massed tanks and other heavy armor both close to Gaza and on the country’s northern border with Lebanon. In addition to driving out recalcitrant Hamas fighters from more than a dozen towns and kibbutzim, the military stated that its forces had largely recaptured the troubled south and the border area surrounding Gaza.
According to Richard Hecht, a spokesperson for the army, “about 1,500 bodies of Hamas (fighters) have found in Israel around the Gaza Strip.” Hecht also stated that security forces have “more or less restored control over the border” with the enclave.
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