GAZA: The death toll in the Hamas strike and Israel’s incessant bombing of Gaza for the past 72 hours crossed 2,400 by the end of Wednesday evening with both sides claiming an equal number of dead, including women, children and the elderly.
The Israeli military said over 1,200 persons, including 155 soldiers, had been killed since October 7 and 150 soldiers and civilians were taken hostage. Gaza’s authorities say a similar number of people, including nine medics of the Red Crescent, had so far been killed. The tiny strip of land has been under Israeli blockade for the past 16 years.
With Israeli airstrikes under “Operation Swords of Iron” reducing city blocks to rubble in Gaza, there are fears that the toll will jump once the bodies beneath the debris are accounted for. However, the carpet bombing has so far failed to suppress rocket attacks by militant group Hamas, which on Wednesday forced the closure of the Ben Gurion airport and disrupted life in the port city of Ashkelon. Humanitarian groups are pleading for the creation of corridors to funnel aid into Gaza. They have warned that hospitals are overcrowded with the injured and medicines were hard to come by after Israel blockaded the entry of food, fuel and medicine into Gaza while its sole power plant had run out of fuel.
The war, however, is likely to escalate and widen as Hezbollah in Lebanon also fired rockets into Israel and claimed to have hit an Israeli garrison, leading to casualties. The Houthis in Yemen and Al Badr in Iraq have also sounded warnings even as an American aircraft carrier reached the vicinity of Israel in a show of solidarity with military muscle. The Gaza authority says they are facing a humanitarian disaster and appealed to the international community to persuade Israel to stop the attacks.
However, Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu and the military have said there would be unprecedented retaliation against Hamas until its military potential was completely degraded. Normal life in Israel has also been disrupted. Its schools, shut since last week, would now move to remote learning from Sunday, said its Education Ministry.