Israel Launches More Gaza Strikes As Netanyahu Says Hamas Must Be Destroyed2 min read
Israeli shellfire slammed into central Gaza on Tuesday 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-old war, amid concerns the conflict could spread with 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 Hamas-ruled Gaza. On Tuesday, the Israeli military said 160 soldiers have so far been killed in Gaza since ground operations began on October 20.
“Seventy-five years of suffering, our rights taken, our country seized, and our people slaughtered. Our rights, as people, are justifiable. What can we do?” said Mariam al-Omsi, walking along an alleyway after an air strike in Shaboura camp, near the town of Rafah in southern Gaza.
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, Israel’s 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 and dismissed what he cast as media speculation his government might call a halt to the fighting.
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.
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 deradicalised.
Retaliating against Hamas’ October 7 cross-border rampage in which it killed 1,200 people and took about 240 hostages, Israel has been under pressure from its top ally the US to shift to lower-intensity warfare and to reduce civilian deaths.
Nearly 20,700 Gazans have been killed, including 250 in the last 24 hours, according to authorities in Gaza.
