2023-10-07 12:11:00
Israel and the Gaza Strip are at war after the start of a surprise and spectacular military offensive by Hamas on Saturday morning, which fired thousands of rockets, infiltrated fighters into Israeli territory and captured Israelis.
This eruption of violence left “more than 200 dead” and “more than 1,000 injured” on the Israeli side, according to the army which accused Hamas of having “massacred civilians”, and 232 dead on the Palestinian side, according to the Ministry of the Health of the Islamist movement in power in the Gaza Strip since 2007.
It is the deadliest escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in decades.
“This is not a simple operation or a cycle of violence, but a war (…) and we will win it,” declared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
On Saturday evening, he promised that the army would use “all its power” to “destroy the capabilities” of Hamas, promising to reduce its hideouts to “ruins”.
“We are on the verge of a great victory,” said Ismaïl Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas.
The offensive comes on the last day of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot in Israel.
It also takes place fifty years and one day after the start of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war which took Israel completely by surprise in the middle of Yom Kippur (the Jewish Day of Atonement), leading to the deaths of 2,600 Israelis and killing at least 9,500. dead and missing on the Arab side in three weeks of combat.
Hostage taking
The hostilities began before 6:30 a.m. (3:30 a.m. GMT) with a deluge of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, towards neighboring Israeli towns but also deeper into Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Taking advantage of the element of surprise, Hamas fighters aboard vehicles, boats and even motorized paragliders made use of the imposing security barrier erected by Israel around the Gaza Strip, attacking military positions or civilians in the street.
The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, claimed in a video to have “captured several enemy soldiers” and the al-Quds Brigades, the military branch of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, also declared that they were holding “numerous soldiers” Israeli.
The army spokesperson confirmed that “Israeli soldiers and civilians” had been kidnapped.
The commander of the Al-Qassam brigades, Mohammad Deif, announced that he had launched the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation against Israel and had fired more than “5,000 rockets” to “put an end to all the crimes of the occupation” .
In response, the Israeli army launched Operation Steel Sabers and, around 11:00 a.m. (08:00 GMT), announced it would carry out its first airstrikes on Gaza in retaliation.
Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an Israeli army spokesman, said Israel had counted more than 3,000 rocket attacks.
The conflict caused major disruptions at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport, and many airlines canceled flights to Tel Aviv this weekend.
Schools will remain closed on Sunday, the start of the week in Israel.
Fights still ongoing
“Please send help (…), they are shooting at our house,” implored a pregnant woman living a few kilometers from the Gaza Strip, in a testimony relayed by the daily Times of Israel.
“I saw a lot of bodies,” Shlomi, an Israeli, told AFP, alongside covered corpses on a road near Kibbutz Gevim in southern Israel.
Mid-morning, Lieutenant Colonel Hecht announced that troops were engaged in ground fighting in Israeli territory in “several locations around the Gaza Strip” against infiltrated fighters described as “terrorists”.
Israeli troops remain engaged in fighting in “22 locations” on Saturday evening against “hundreds” of armed men who have “invaded” Israel, he then declared.
Israeli airstrikes destroyed the three buildings of more than ten floors of the “Palestine Tower” in Gaza.
Doctors Without Borders said a strike hit a hospital in the enclave, causing several deaths.
In the occupied West Bank, five Palestinians were killed and 120 injured in clashes with Israeli forces and settlers, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Israeli General Rassan Alian said Hamas had “opened the gates of hell” and would “pay the consequences”.
From the morning, hundreds of civilians fled their homes in northeastern Gaza to move away from the border with Israel.
On Saturday evening, Israel ordered the electricity supply to the enclave to be cut off.
“Restore calm”
The UN announced that it had convened an emergency meeting of the Security Council on the Middle East on Sunday.
The head of the organization, Antonio Guterres, urged the international community to “diplomatic efforts to avoid a widening of the conflagration”.
US President Joe Biden insisted on Saturday, in a short speech at the White House, that the United States’ support for Israel was “set in stone and unshakeable”.
The American Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, called on the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, to “continue and intensify measures to restore calm and stability in the West Bank”.
He “reiterated the unequivocal condemnation of Hamas’ terrorist attacks against Israel, and called on all leaders in the region to condemn them.”
The EU and several European capitals for their part “strongly condemned” the attacks.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who spoke with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Mr. Netanyahu, “condemns the attacks carried out from Gaza against Israel, its soldiers and its population.”
According to the Elysée, Mr. Macron also spoke with the Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah Al-Sissi, Mr. Abbas and the head of the Lebanese government, Najib Mikati, expressing to them “his concern about the situation and reminded them to everyone the importance of unequivocally condemning the terrorist attacks carried out against Israel.
In May, Israel launched an offensive against Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip, triggering a five-day war with Islamic Jihad and other armed groups in the territory that cost the lives of 34 Palestinians and one Israeli woman.
More than a thousand rockets had been fired from Gaza towards Israel, most of them intercepted. Israel, for its part, had increased airstrikes on this territory.
Hamas remained aloof from the conflict.
Israel has imposed a strict blockade on the Gaza Strip since Hamas took control.
07/10/2023 22:52:36 – Sderot (Israel) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
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