More than 200 Israelis died in a surprise large-scale attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas on Saturday, the army said, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to reduce the group’s Gaza hideouts to “rubble”.
“We are at war,” Netanyahu told the stunned nation in the morning, after Hamas had launched its multipronged attack at dawn, half a century after the outbreak of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. “There are still 22 locations where we are engaging with terrorists that came into Israel, from the sea, from the land and from the air,” said army spokesman Richard Hecht on what he labelled a “robust ground invasion”.
Hecht said there was also a “severe hostage situation” in the Negev desert communities of Beeri and Ofakim east of Gaza. Bodies were strewn on the streets of the Israeli town of Sderot near Gaza and inside cars, the windscreens shattered by hails of bullets. Israel’s state-run electricity company cut the power supply to Gaza as army flares lit up the night sky.
Its armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, claimed to have fired more than 5,000 rockets, while Hecht said Israel had counted more than 3,000 incoming rockets.“The cycle of intifadas and revolutions in the battle to liberate our land and our prisoners languishing in occupation prisons must be completed,” he said.Air raid sirens wailed across southern and central Israel, as well as in Jerusalem.
In northern Gaza on Saturday, hundreds of people fled their homes, carrying food and blankets, an AFP correspondent said.
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