Israel has vowed to lay total siege to the Gaza Strip in retaliation for hundreds of killings and kidnappings by Hamas.
scours the country's south for militants, guards breaches in its border fence and pounds the impoverished, Hamas-ruled territory in the wake of anIsrael's vaunted military and intelligence apparatus was caught completely off guard, bringing heavy battles to its streets for the first time in decades.
But civilians have already paid a high price. Around 700 people have been killed in Israel — a staggering toll by the scale of its recent conflicts. Nearly 500 have been killed in Gaza, an enclave of 2.3 million Palestinians bordering Israel and Egypt. He said Israel was at war with "human animals", using the kind of dehumanising language often heard on both sides at times of soaring tensions.
He said the group — which in the past has agreed to painful, lopsided exchanges in which it released large numbers of prisoners for individual captives or even the remains of soldiers — aims to free all Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.Egypt is trying to mediate an initial deal in which Hamas would release captive women in exchange for Israel freeing female Palestinian prisoners, Egypt's state-ownednewspaper reported.
Hagari reiterated that the goal is to decimate Hamas' military and governing capabilities — a massive task given that the group has ruled Gaza through the 16-year blockade and four previous wars with Israel. The Palestinians want a state of their own in all three territories, captured by Israel in the 1967 war, but the last serious peace talks broke down well over a decade ago, and Israel's far-right government is opposed to Palestinian statehood.
In the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, an Israeli airstrike early on Monday killed 19 people, including women and children, said Talat Barhoum, a doctor at the local Al-Najjar Hospital.
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