Israel increased airstrikes on the Gaza Strip and sealed it off from food, fuel and other supplies Monday in retaliation for a bloody incursion by Hamas militants, as the war's death toll rose to nearly 1,600 on both sides. Hamas also escalated the conflict, pledging to kill captured Israelis if attacks targeted civilians without warnings.
In the war's third day, Israel was still finding bodies from Hamas' stunning weekend attack into southern Israeli towns. Rescue workers found 100 bodies in the tiny farming community of Beeri – around 10% of its population – after a long hostage standoff with gunmen. In Gaza, tens of thousands fled their homes as relentless airstrikes leveled buildings.
The Israeli military said it had largely gained control in the south after the attack caught its vaunted military and intelligence apparatus completely off guard and led to fierce battles in its streets for the first time in decades. Hamas and other militants in Gaza say they are holding more than 130 soldiers and civilians snatched from inside Israel.
Israeli tanks and drones were deployed to guard breaches in the Gaza border fence to prevent new incursions. Thousands of Israelis were evacuated from more than a dozen towns near Gaza, and the military summoned 300,000 reservists – a massive mobilization in a short time.
The moves, along with Israel’s formal declaration of war on Sunday , pointed to Israel increasingly shifting to the offensive against Hamas, threatening greater destruction in the densely populated, impoverished Gaza Strip.
“We have only started striking Hamas,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a nationally televised address. “What we will do to our enemies in the coming days will reverberate with them for generations.”
As the Israeli military brought additional forces near the border, a major question was whether it will launch a ground assault into the tiny Mediterranean coastal territory. The last ground assault was in 2014.
The Israeli military said more than 900 people already have been killed in Israel. In Gaza, more than 680 people have been killed, according to authorities there; Israel says hundreds of Hamas fighters are among them. Thousands have been wounded on both sides.
In response to Israel's aerial attacks, the spokesman of Hamas' armed wing, Abu Obeida, said Monday night that the group will kill one Israeli civilian captive any time Israel targets civilians in their homes in Gaza “without prior warning.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen warned Hamas against harming any of the hostages, saying, “This war crime will not be forgiven.” Netanyahu appointed a former military commander to manage the hostage and missing persons crisis.
Attacks by both sides created more scenes of devastation Monday. In Israel's southern coastal city of Ashkelon, a man holding a crutch with one hand and an older boy with the other joined evacuees being shepherded from a street after a rocket blew out the front of a house.
In Gaza, Palestinians passed the bodies of the dead through dense crowds of men in the rubble in the Jebaliya refugee camp.
Early Monday evening, the sound of explosions echoed over Jerusalem when a volley of rockets fired from Gaza hit two neighborhoods – a sign of Hamas’s reach. Israeli media said seven were wounded.
Israeli warplanes carried out an intense bombardment of Rimal, a residential and commercial district of central Gaza City, after issuing warnings for residents to evacuate. Amid continuous explosions, the building housing the headquarters of the Palestinian Telecommunications Company was destroyed.
Israeli airstrikes on Gaza have razed 790 housing units and severely damaged 5,330, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said early Tuesday. Damage to three water and sanitation sites have cut off services to 400,000.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered a “complete siege” on Gaza, saying authorities would cut electricity and block the entry of food and fuel.
Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council aid group, warned that Israel’s siege would spell “utter disaster” for Gazans. “There is no doubt that collective punishment is in violation of international law,” he told The Associated Press. “If and when it would lead to wounded children dying in hospitals because of lack of energy, electricity and supplies, it could amount to war crimes.”
The Israeli siege will leave Gaza almost entirely dependent on its crossing into neighboring Egypt at Rafah, where cargo capacities are lower than other crossings into Israel.
An Egyptian military official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press, said more than 2 tons of medical supplies from the Egyptian Red Crescent were sent to Gaza and efforts were underway to organize food and other deliveries.
Tens of thousands of Gaza residents continued to flee. The U.N. said Tuesday that more than 187,000 of Gaza's 2.3 million people have left their homes – the most since a 2014 air and ground offensive by Israel uprooted about 400,000.
UNRWA, the U.N. agencies for Palestinian refugees, is sheltering more than 137,000 people in schools across the territory. Families have taken in some 41,000 others.
In the southern Gaza city of Rafah, an Israeli airstrike early Monday killed 19 people, including women and children, said Talat Barhoum, a doctor at the local Al-Najjar Hospital.
Meanwhile in the West Bank, Palestinians entered a fourth day under severe movement restrictions. Israeli authorities have sealed off crossings to the occupied territory and closed checkpoints, blocking movement between cities and towns. Clashes between rock-throwing Palestinians and Israeli forces in the territory since the start of the incursion have left 15 Palestinians dead, according to the U.N.
The leaders of the United States, France, Germany, Italy and Britain pledged in a joint statement Monday to "support Israel in its efforts to defend itself" after the surprise attacks by militant group Hamas.
They added that they "recognize the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people" but said Hamas "offers nothing for the Palestinian people other than more terror and bloodshed," in the statement released by the White House.
Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler told Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas he was working to prevent "an expansion" of conflict after the surprise Hamas attack on Israel, Saudi state media said early Tuesday.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman also told Abbas the Gulf kingdom continued "to stand by the Palestinian people to achieve their legitimate rights to a decent life, achieve their hopes and aspirations, and achieve just and lasting peace," the official Saudi Press Agency reported.
Reeling from the Palestinian Islamist group's unprecedented ground, air and sea attacks, Israel has counted 800 dead and launched a withering barrage of strikes on Gaza that have raised the death toll there to 687.
The spiralling violence kicked off amid speculation that Saudi Arabia, which has never recognised Israel, would agree to normalise ties as part of a deal in which it would obtain security guarantees from the United States as well as assistance developing a civilian nuclear programme.
However Prince Mohammed told Fox News last month that the Palestinian issue was "very important" for Saudi Arabia, home to the holiest sites in Islam in Mecca and Medina. "We need to solve that part. We need to ease the life of the Palestinians," Prince Mohammed said.
Analysts say any progress towards normalisation has now been dealt a heavy blow by the ongoing fighting.
Major U.S. airline Delta on Monday said it was cancelling all flights to Israel until the end of the month after the shock attack by Hamas militants.
"As Delta continues monitoring events in the region, we have made the difficult decision to cancel our Tel Aviv flights through Oct. 31, 2023," the company said.
"Our hearts are with those who are impacted as our people work to find safe alternatives for customers trying to depart Tel Aviv," it added.
Delta's suspension follows similar decisions by American Airlines, Air France, KLM, Lufthansa, Emirates and Ryanair and others that this weekend pulled flights to Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport.