Israel on Monday pounded Gaza with “significant” strikes as IDF soldiers battled Hamas forces in the besieged territory, ignoring ceasefire calls by UN aid agencies who condemned surging civilian deaths in the month-long conflict.
The health ministry in Gaza says more than 9,770 people, many of them women and children, have been killed in Israeli strikes and the intensifying ground campaign since the war began.
Israeli troops and Hamas fighters engaged in house-to-house combat in densely populated Gaza, where the war has sent 1.5 million people fleeing to other parts of the territory in a desperate search for cover.
“We will take the fight to Hamas wherever they are, underground, above ground”, Israeli army spokesman Jonathan Conricus said at a briefing Monday, repeating calls for civilians to leave the urban war zone in the north of the Gaza Strip.
“We will be able to dismantle Hamas, stronghold after stronghold, battalion after battalion, until we achieve the ultimate goal, which is to rid the Gaza Strip — the entire Gaza Strip — of Hamas.”
Conricus again accused Hamas of building tunnels underneath hospitals, schools and places of worship in Gaza to hide fighters, plan attacks and store ammunition — a charge the resistance group has repeatedly denied.
“This strike is like an earthquake,” Gaza City resident Alaa Abu Hasera said, in a devastated area where entire blocks were reduced to rubble.
Israel launched a massive bombing campaign after the Palestinian fighters staged the worst attack in the country’s history.
Israel has resisted calls for a halt in the fighting, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken touring the region calling for “pauses” while rejecting Arab countries’ demands for a ceasefire.—Agencies
