Israel and Hamas at war | A complete siege imposed on the Gaza Strip

(Jerusalem) The Israeli army on Monday ordered a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip controlled by Hamas, on the third day of the surprise and massive offensive launched by the Palestinian Islamist movement, compared by Israel to September 11, 2001.

After this unprecedented attack by land, air and sea, launched on Saturday in the middle of Shabbat, the Jewish weekly rest, by Hamas, the Israeli army announced that it had “control” on Monday of the localities in the south of the country targeted. But “there could still be terrorists in the area,” warned the army spokesperson.

The war left more than 1,100 dead in total, according to official reports from both sides. On the Israeli side, 250 people were massacred in a rave Saturday near the Gaza Strip, according to the spokesperson for the NGO Zaka, Moti Bukjin, who participated in the collection of bodies.

Tens of thousands of Israeli soldiers are deployed around the Gaza Strip, a thin coastal territory populated by 2.3 million Palestinians and controlled by Hamas since 2007. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced Monday that he was imposing “a complete siege” to the Gaza Strip: “No electricity, no water, no gas”.

The army is also trying to save Israelis taken hostage by Hamas, more than a hundred according to the Israeli government, unprecedented in the history of the country taken by surprise by this offensive launched on Saturday on the last day of the holidays. Jewish Sukkot celebrations, “by far the worst day in Israel’s history,” according to an army spokesperson.

“What happened is unprecedented in Israel,” acknowledged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

More than 700 Israelis were killed in just over 48 hours and 2,150 injured, according to a new army report released Monday morning. On the Palestinian side, 493 people were killed, according to local authorities.

Civilian and military hostages

The Israeli army estimates that around 1,000 Hamas fighters participated in the “invasion of Israel,” a spokesperson said on X.

During the night “more than 500 targets of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists” were struck according to the Israeli army. “Civilians and soldiers are in the hands of the enemy, it is war time,” said Israeli Army Chief General Herzi Halevi.

At midday on Monday, rocket warning sirens sounded in Jerusalem and were quickly followed by several detonations.

Mr Netanyahu warned of a “long and difficult” war and called on residents of certain areas of Gaza to leave the territory. The war has displaced more than 123,000 people in the Gaza Strip, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) announced on Monday.

A number of nationals of other countries, some also having Israeli nationality, were killed in the Hamas offensive, including 12 Thais, 10 Nepalese, four Americans, a French woman and a Canadian, according to the authorities of these countries.

Jonathan Panikoff, director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative, said “Israel was taken by surprise by this unprecedented attack” and “many Israelis have difficulty understanding how this could have happened.” “.

For Yaakov Shoshani, 70, a resident of Sderot, in southern Israel, “the systems have all failed here, whether intelligence, military intelligence, civil intelligence, detection systems, the border fence [avec Gaza]everything failed.”

“This is by far the worst day in Israeli history. “Never before have so many Israelis been killed in one go,” an army spokesperson said, adding that it could be “both 9/11 and Pearl Harbor.” “.

After crossing the border barrier that Israel considered impregnable, Hamas fighters rushed from the Gaza Strip into Jewish communities in the south of the country. There, armed men went from house to house, shooting down citizens or kidnapping them to take them back to Gaza.

In the area on the border of the Gaza Strip where the rave“They massacred people in cold blood in an absolutely inconceivable way,” the spokesperson for the NGO Zaka, Moti Bukjin, told AFP, his voice shaking with emotion, after having participated in collecting bodies.

“Very serious failure”

A former Israeli soldier said the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, which remains a national trauma in Israel, was “small matter” compared to Saturday’s Hamas raid, adding that it was a “very serious failure “.

The Hamas offensive was launched 50 years and one day after this war which took Israel completely by surprise and left 2,600 dead on the Israeli side in three weeks of fighting.

The Al-Qassam Brigades, the military branch of Hamas, announced that they had launched this operation and fired more than 5,000 rockets towards Israel to “put an end to the crimes of the occupation”.

Israel, which has occupied the West Bank since 1967, has annexed the eastern part of Jerusalem, and has imposed a blockade on Gaza since Hamas took power there in 2007.

Israel’s Education Ministry announced the closure of schools until at least Tuesday.

The Hamas attack was condemned by many Western countries. The United States on Sunday began sending military aid to Israel with new munitions and moving its carrier strike group closer to the USS aircraft carrier Gerald Ford in Mediterranean.

China on Monday condemned “actions harming civilians”, and Arab League “rejected violence on both sides”. For its part, the United Arab Emirates said it was “dismayed” by the hostage-taking of Israeli civilians.