LAST UPDATE | 10 Oct 2023
AROUND 1,500 BODIES of Hamas militants have been found in Israel around the Gaza Strip, the army said this morning, as it pummelled the Palestinian enclave with air strikes.
“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.
Hecht said the military had deployed 35 battalions to the border area.
“We are building infrastructure for future operations,” he said.
Israel is reeling 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.
Before dawn today, the Israeli military struck what it said were Hamas targets in Gaza, especially in the Rimal neighbourhood and in the southern city of Khan Yunis.
Hamas – which the Israeli army estimates sent about 1,000 fighters across the border, spraying gunfire at civilians – said yesterday that Israeli air strikes had killed four of the hostages.
It later said it could start killing them itself.
Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel would impose a “complete siege” on the long-blockaded enclave of 2.3 million people: “No electricity, no food, no water, no gas – it’s all closed.”
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was “deeply distressed” by the siege announcement, and warned Gaza’s already dire humanitarian situation will now “only deteriorate exponentially”.
Palestinians in the coastal territory braced for what many feared will be a massive Israeli ground attack aiming to defeat Hamas and liberate the hostages.
Israel has expressed alarm and revulsion at Hamas’s attack across the Gaza border fence – long deemed impregnable and guarded by surveillance cameras, drones, patrols and watchtowers.
More than 270 bodies, mostly young people, were strewn across the site of a music festival in a Negev desert kibbutz, while other revellers were feared to be among the captives taken into Gaza.
“They butchered people in cold blood in an inconceivable way,” said Moti Bukjin of the Zaka religious volunteer group which helped collect the human remains.
Among the hostages were children and a Holocaust survivor in a wheelchair, Israeli officials have said, while foreign or dual nationals have been reported abducted or missing by countries including Thailand, Germany, Argentina, France and the United States.
Israelis have voiced anger at the intelligence failure.
But for now, its people appear to have put aside divisions over plans by Netanyahu’s hard-right government for judicial reforms.
In his speech, Netanyahu called on opposition leaders to immediately form “an emergency government of national unity without any preconditions”.
Inside Gaza, air strikes wrought widespread destruction in the Jabalia refugee camp, where charred bodies were pulled from the rubble and relatives wailed in grief.
Israel has blockaded Gaza since Hamas assumed control there in 2007, leading to four previous wars with Israel.
Israeli strikes have levelled residential tower blocks, a large mosque and the territory’s major bank building.
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees said it was sheltering more than 137,000 people in schools across Gaza.
“The situation is unbearable,” Amal al-Sarsawi, 37, said from a classroom with her terrified children.
Protests and solidarity rallies have been taking place around the world over the last 24 hours, as international pressure builds on both groups.
Rishi Sunak said the “barbaric acts” committed by Hamas were “evil”.
“There is no other word to describe what we have have seen,” he said.
“There are not two sides to these events. There is no question of balance. I stand with Israel.”
Meanwhile a massive rally took place in London, where people showed support for Palestinians.
The Israeli embassy there was boarded up as hundreds took part in a pro-Palestine demonstration on Monday.
Groups including Stop the War and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign gathered at the embassy in Kensington, waving placards calling for Israel to “end the occupation”.
Fireworks were let off, flares were lit and chants of “Israel is a terrorist state”, “Free Palestine” and “Allahu akbar” rang out.
Similarly in Ireland, a solidarity rally for Palestinians was held outside Dáil Éireann yesterday evening by TDs and representatives from People Before Profit, the Union of Students in Ireland and The Irish Anti War Movement.
They condemned the “Israeli occupation and oppression”.
The European Commission has reversed its decision to suspend development aid payments to Palestinians, contradicting its commissioner for Neighbourhood and Engagement Oliver Varhelyi.
Earlier, Varhelyi posted on social media earlier that the EU is also placing €691 million of support “under review” after the Hamas assault on Israel.
The move was criticised by the Irish government as it believed there was “no legal basis” for the Commissioner’s “unilateral decision”.
The Department of Foreign Affairs has said it is untrue that the Irish state refused to support the categorisation of Hamas as a “terrorist organisation” in the EU’s initial statement on the war between Israel and Hamas.
European news site i24NEWS yesterday claimed that the EU wanted to issue a “harsher statement” on the war, but Luxembourg, Ireland and Denmark refused to call Hamas a terror organisation in the statement.
A source has told The Journal that in reality, Ireland had called for a statement that asked for a de-escalation of hostilities on both sides.
© AFP 2023 with additional reporting by PA
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