Israel formed an emergency unity government Wednesday as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Hamas “worse than ISIS” and the country’s defense minister vowed to destroy the militant group.
Ground troops, artillery and other equipment is stationed outside of Gaza, which Hamas controls, the military said.
Forces are “making preparations for the next stage of the war, which will come when the timing is opportune and fit for our purposes,” said Israel Defense Forces spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus.
He said that Hamas leadership is being targeted by strikes in Gaza when they are identified.
Gaza has 2.2 million people and is one of the most densely populated areas on earth.
Mohamed Mughisib, a Palestinian doctor and a deputy coordinator with Doctors Without Borders, said in a telephone interview from Gaza that the strikes that have flattened buildings have involved collateral damage.
“We are all civilians, normal doctors, nurses, teachers, students. We’re not Hamas,” Mughisib, said in a telephone interview from Gaza. “It’s the children who are dying,” he said.
Israel has been launching airstrikes in Gaza in response to the Hamas attacks. At least 1,200 people in Israel have been killed, according to the Israeli military, and in Gaza the Palestinian Health Ministry has said 1,100 people have been killed.
Twenty-two Americans are known dead and 17 are known to be unaccounted for, officials in the U.S. said. Some Americans are believed to be held hostage, but a number has not been released.
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Wednesday the number of people believed to be held hostage is “very small,” but he noted more information is learned every day.
Israel’s increasingly destructive airstrikes in Gaza have flattened entire city blocks and left unknown numbers of bodies beneath debris. A ground offensive in Gaza, whose 2.3 million residents are densely packed into a tiny, coastal strip, would likely result in a surge of casualties for fighters on both sides.
The death toll in Gaza rose to 1,200 early Thursday, the Palestinian health ministry said, including 51 people killed in what the Israeli military called a large-scale attack in the hours before daylight.
Hamas on Wednesday launched a fresh barrage of rockets into Israel aimed at the southern town of Ashkelon.
The UN said late Wednesday the number of people displaced by the airstrikes had soared 30 percent within 24 hours, to 339,000, two-thirds of them crowding into U.N. schools. Others sought shelter in the shrinking number of safe neighborhoods in the strip of land only 40 kilometers (25 miles) long, wedged among Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea.
After nightfall, Palestinians were plunged into pitch blackness in large parts of Gaza City and elsewhere after the territory’s only power station ran out of fuel and shut down. Only a few lights from private generators still glowed.
Israel on Monday halted the entry of food, water, fuel and medicine into the territory. The sole remaining crossing from Egypt was shut down Tuesday after airstrikes hit nearby.
The Gaza Strip’s biggest hospital, Al-Shifa, has only enough fuel to keep power on for three days, said Matthias Kannes, a Gaza-based official for Doctors Without Borders. The group said the two hospitals it runs in Gaza were running out of surgical equipment, antibiotics, fuel and other supplies.
Ghassan Abu Sitta, a reconstructive surgeon at al-Shifa, said he had 50 patients waiting to go to the operating room.
“We’re already beyond the capacity of the system to cope,” he said. The health system “has the rest of the week before it collapses, not just because of the diesel. All supplies are running short.”
The Palestinian Red Crescent said other hospitals’ generators will run out in five days. Residential buildings, unable to store as much diesel, likely will go dark sooner.
Egypt and international groups have been calling for humanitarian corridors into Gaza. Convoys stood loaded with fuel and food Wednesday on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, but were unable to enter Gaza, an Egyptian security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.
In Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, rescue workers and civilians carried men covered with blood and soot toward ambulances after strikes toppled buildings. Streets were left blanketed with metal, chunks of concrete and thick dust.
Medical teams and rescuers struggled to enter other areas where roads were too damaged, including Gaza City’s al-Karama district, where a “large number” were killed or wounded, according to the Hamas-run Interior Ministry. Strikes have killed at least four Red Crescent paramedics, the organization said.
The risk of the war spreading was evident Wednesday after the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah fired anti-tank missiles at an Israeli military position and claimed to have killed and wounded troops.
AP, NBC News
