Gaza: More than 300 Gazans were also martyred when Israel responded with one of its most devastating days of retaliatory strikes. Fighting continued into the night.
The health ministry of the Palestinian authority said at least 313 Palestinians have been martyred, including 20 children, and nearly 2,000 wounded by Israeli air strikes in Gaza since Saturday.
“We´ll reach each and every community till we kill every terrorist in Israel,” said military spokesperson Daniel Hagari, a day after hundreds of Hamas fighters crossed into Israel in vehicles, boats and even using paragliders.
“Our mission for the upcoming 24 hours is to evacuate all residents” from communities around the Gaza Strip, he told journalists.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to turn the besieged Palestinian enclave into a “deserted island”.
“We will take mighty vengeance for this wicked day,” PM Netanyahu said.
“Hamas launched a cruel and wicked war. We will win this war but the price is too heavy to bear,” he said. “Hamas wants to murder us all. This is an enemy that murders mothers and children in their homes, in their beds. An enemy that abducts elderly, children, teenage girls.”
Senior military officers were among those killed in fighting near Gaza, the Israeli military said.
Israeli troops clashed with Hamas fighters throughout the night in some parts of southern Israel. In a briefing on social media, an Israeli army spokesperson said the situation was not fully under control.
The Israeli prime minister’s office said the security cabinet had approved steps to destroy the military and governmental capabilities of Hamas and Islamic Jihad “for many years”, including cutting electricity and fuel supplies and the entry of goods into Gaza.
‘Gates of hell’
Israeli army Major General Ghasan Alyan warned Hamas had “opened the gates of hell”.
A journalist in Gaza saw clouds of dust from the remains of bombed residential towers which Gaza’s interior ministry said contained 100 apartments.
Israel’s military said it had warned residents to evacuate before targeting the multi-storey buildings used by Hamas.
Israel’s state-run electricity company cut the power supply to Gaza as army flares lit up the night sky.
Before Saturday, at least 247 Palestinians were marytred, 32 Israelis and two foreigners had been killed this year, including combatants and civilians, according to Israeli and Palestinian officials.
