Israel forms emergency government as Gaza deaths mount
Israel has formed a war cabinet from both sides of parliament as it retaliates against the deadly Hamas incursion.
Israel has formed an emergency unity government as its jets pounded Gaza and tanks massed around the densely populated Palestinian enclave while Hamas militants said they were still fighting on Israeli territory following their shock weekend incursion.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday agreed to form a war cabinet with former defence minister and centrist opposition party leader Benny Gantz and focus entirely on the conflict, a joint statement from Gantz’s National Unity party said.
Israel’s death toll rose to 1200 with over 2700 wounded, its military said, from Hamas militants’ hours-long rampage after breaching the fence enclosing Gaza on Saturday.
US President Joe Biden has issued a warning seemingly aimed at Hamas’ Iranian supporters not to exploit the Gaza conflagration to start a wider Middle East war.
Israeli reprisal strikes on blockaded Gaza have killed 1100 people and wounded 5339, Gaza’s Health Ministry said. Some 535 residential buildings had been destroyed leaving around 250,000 homeless, Hamas officials said. Most of the displaced were in UN-designated shelters, others huddling in shattered streets.
The group’s armed wing, the Al Qassam Brigades, said it was still fighting inside Israel on Wednesday. Israel deployed tanks and armoured vehicles just north of Gaza where the clashes were reported but had no immediate comment on the Hamas claim.
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Later in the day, alerts warning of incoming aircraft were issued across northern Israel, well removed from Gaza in the south, but the Israeli military subsequently said these may have been a malfunction.
A Reuters TV crew saw a house hit by an apparent projectile near Metulla in Israel’s far north, close to the border with south Lebanon where the heavily armed Iran-backed Hezbollah group is active.
Hamas’s armed wing said it had targeted the northern Israeli coastal city of Haifa with an R60 rocket. There were no immediate reports of casualties after sirens sounded in Haifa and nearby towns.
Israel has vowed swift punishment for the deadliest Palestinian militant attack in its 75-year history, which left corpses strewn around a music festival and a kibbutz community.
The military said dozens of its fighter jets struck more than 200 targets in a neighbourhood of Gaza City overnight that it said had been used by Hamas to launch its attacks.
Israel has put Gaza under “total siege” to stop food and fuel from reaching the enclave of 2.3 million people, many poor and dependent on aid. Hamas media said on Wednesday electricity went out after the only power station stopped working.
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With Palestinian rescue workers overwhelmed, others in the crowded coastal strip joined the search for bodies in the rubble.
The Israeli military said its troops had killed at least 1000 Palestinian gunmen who infiltrated from Gaza and the Chief of the General Staff met commanders to discuss their next steps.
Scores of Israelis and others from abroad were taken to Gaza as hostages, some of whom were paraded through streets. Both sides have said many women and children were among the dead and wounded.
Israeli security forces have killed at least 27 Palestinians during clashes in the occupied West Bank since Saturday, as Palestinian factions called on people in the Palestinian territory to rise up following Hamas’ strike from Gaza.
In another sign of the crisis widening, Israeli shelling hit southern Lebanese towns after a rocket attack by the powerful Hezbollah in the fourth consecutive day of violence there.
A ground offensive into Gaza carries risks for Israel, notably to the hostages held in the narrow, widely urbanised enclave. Hamas has threatened to execute a captive for each home hit without warning.
Israel withdrew settlers and troops from Gaza in 2005 after 38 years of occupation. An Israeli blockade since Hamas seized power in the enclave in 2007 has created conditions that Palestinians say are intolerable.
Washington said it was talking with Israel and Egypt about safe passage for civilians from Gaza, with food in short supply.
Hussein Al-Sheikh, an official in the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, said the international community must intervene urgently to avert “a major humanitarian catastrophe”.
-AAP
