Israel is under a deadly attack by Hamas militants who stormed the border fence under a barrage of rocket fire on Saturday morning and killed more than 900 people inside Israel.
In response, Israel is carrying out a massive air and artillery bombardment of Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip that has so far killed at least 687 people in the coastal enclave.
“Approximately 1,500 bodies of Hamas (fighters) were found in Israel around the Gaza Strip,” military spokesman Richard Hecht told reporters, adding that security forces had “more or less restored control over the border” with Gaza.”Since last night we know that no one came in .. but infiltrations can still happen.”
The army had “nearly completed” evacuation of all the communities around the border, he added that the military had deployed 35 battalions to the border area.
In early October 2023, war broke out between Israel and Hamas, the militant Islamist group that has controlled Gaza since 2006. Hamas fighters fired rockets into Israel and stormed southern Israeli cities and towns across the border of the Gaza strip, killing and injuring hundreds of soldiers and civilians and taking dozen of hostages. The attack took Israel by surprise, though the state quickly mounted a deadly retaliation operation. One day after the October 7 attack, the Israeli cabinet formally declare war against Hamas, followed by a directive from the defense minister to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to carry out a “complete siege” of Gaza.
Hospitals overwhelmed as the Israeli army continues bombardment of the Gaza Strip, four days after Hamas sent rockets and fighters into Israel in an unprecedented attack.
The rockets Hamas has fired into Israel have brought waves of Israeli airstrikes, and about a fourth of the Palestinian projectiles have fallen short, landing in Gaza. At least 119 Gazans have been killed, including a family of six, and homes and businesses have been left in ruins, deepening the misery in the isolated territory. The rockets have killed seven Israelis and sown panic as far away as Tel Aviv and jerusalem.
But in the cruel calculations governing so much of the Middle East conflict, the ability to fire or not fire rockets gives Hamas leverage it can use to attain more limited goals. The militant group in recent years observed a shaky, informal cease-fire with Israel, trading calm for an easing of the blockade and hundreds of millions of dollars in aid from Qatar that was delivered regularly through Israel’s Erez crossing.
“The death and destruction from the air raids are horrific,” said Tareq Baconi, an analyst with the Crisis Group, an international think tank. But for Hamas, “that kind of suffering is inevitable when Palestinians are resisting Israeli occupation.”
