Israeli shellfire yesterday slammed into central Gaza after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged no respite in attacks on Hamas, as residents of the coastal enclave mourned more dead in a war that has cost more than 20,000 Palestinian lives.
Israel is determined to pursue its goal of destroying Hamas, despite global calls for a ceasefire in the 11-week war, amid concerns that the conflict could spread with the US and Iran-aligned forces attacking each other elsewhere in the region.
Since Hamas made the deadliest Palestinian militant attack on Israel in the country’s 75-year history, Netanyahu has responded with an all-out assault on Gaza.
Photo: AP
Yesterday, the Israeli military said 160 soldiers have so far been killed in Gaza since ground operations began on Oct. 20.
At Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, the largest medical facility in the southern Gaza Strip, medics said 10 Palestinians had been killed in two separate Israeli air strikes.
Khan Younis resident Salah Shaat said he had heard a huge explosion at sunset on Monday that destroyed a building.
“There were displaced people and residents inside the house, more than 20 people, children and women. We managed to rescue some children, but the rest were martyred,” he said.
In Jerusalem, the Israeli military said the air force carried out a strike against 100 Hamas targets, including tunnel shafts, to assist ground forces.
It said in a statement that in Shejaia, a suburb near Gaza City, troops backed by aircraft killed several fighters spotted trying to plant a bomb underneath a tank. More than 10 fighters were killed in separate incidents in Khan Younis.
Netanyahu, who visited Israeli troops in northern Gaza on Monday, told lawmakers from his Likud Party that the war was far from over.
He said Israel would not succeed in freeing its remaining hostages held by Hamas without applying military pressure.
“We are not stopping. The war will continue until the end, until we finish it, no less,” Netanyahu said.
In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Monday, Netanyahu reiterated three prerequisites for peace: Hamas must be destroyed, Gaza must be demilitarized and Palestinian society must be deradicalized.
Elsewhere in the region, US forces have come under attack by Iran-backed militants in Iraq and Syria over Washington’s backing of Israel in the war against Hamas.
The US military carried out retaliatory airstrikes on Monday in Iraq after a drone attack by Iran-aligned militants on a US base in Erbil left one US service member in a critical condition and wounded two other US personnel, officials said.
The airstrikes killed “a number of Kataib Hezbollah militants” and destroyed multiple facilities used by the group, the US military said.
An Iraqi Ministry of interior official yesterday said the strikes had targeted a Hashed al-Shaabi site in the central city of Hilla, one of two locations targeted in the Babylon Governate.
One person was killed and 20 wounded, while four others were wounded in another strike in the southern Wassit Governate, the official said.
Additional reporting by AFP
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