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Destruction from Israeli aerial bombardment is senn in Gaze City, Wednesday. (AP-Yonhap) |
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined with a top political rival Wednesday to create a wartime Cabinet to oversee the fight to avenge the gruesome weekend attack by Hamas militants.
In the sealed-off Gaza Strip, Palestinian suffering mounted as Israeli bombardment demolished neighborhoods and the only power plant ran out of fuel.
Netanyahu vowed to “crush and destroy” Hamas. “Every Hamas member is a dead man,” he said in a televised address.
The new Cabinet establishes a degree of unity after years of bitterly divisive politics and at a time when the Israeli military appears increasingly likely to launch a ground offensive into Gaza. The war has already claimed at least 2,300 lives on both sides.
The Israeli government is under intense public pressure to topple Hamas after its militants stormed through a border fence Saturday and massacred hundreds of Israelis in their homes, on the streets and at an outdoor music festival.
Netanyahu alleged that the attackers engaged in atrocities, including binding boys and girls and shooting them in the head, burning people alive, raping women and beheading soldiers.
The prime minister’s allegations could not be independently confirmed, and authorities did not immediately offer further details. Rescue workers and witnesses have described horrifying scenes, including the slaughter of elderly people and finding bloody rooms crowded with massacred civilians.
Militants in Gaza are holding an estimated 150 people taken hostage from Israel -- soldiers, men, women, children and older adults -- and they have fired thousands of rockets into Israel over the past five days.
The Cabinet, which will focus only on issues of war, will be led by Netanyahu; Benny Gantz, a senior opposition figure and former defense minister; and current Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Still, Israel’s political divisions remain. The country's chief opposition leader, Yair Lapid, was invited to join the Cabinet but did not immediately respond to the offer. It appeared that the rest of Netanyahu’s existing government partners, a collection of far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties, would remain in place to handle non-war issues.
Israel's increasingly destructive airstrikes in Gaza have flattened entire city blocks and left unknown numbers of bodies beneath debris. A ground offensive in Gaza, whose 2.3 million residents are densely packed into a tiny, coastal strip, would likely result in a surge of casualties for fighters on both sides.
The death toll in Gaza rose to 1,200 early Thursday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, including 51 people killed in what the Israeli military called a large-scale attack in the hours before daylight.
Hamas on Wednesday launched a fresh barrage of rockets into Israel aimed at the southern town of Ashkelon.
The UN said late Wednesday the number of people displaced by the airstrikes had soared 30 percent within 24 hours, to 339,000, two-thirds of them crowding into UN schools. Others sought shelter in the shrinking number of safe neighborhoods in the strip of land only 40 kilometers long, wedged among Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea.
After nightfall, Palestinians were plunged into pitch blackness in large parts of Gaza City and elsewhere after the territory's only power station ran out of fuel and shut down. Only a few lights from private generators still glowed.
Israel on Monday halted the entry of food, water, fuel and medicine into the territory. The sole remaining crossing from Egypt was shut down Tuesday after airstrikes hit nearby.
The Gaza Strip’s biggest hospital, Al-Shifa, has only enough fuel to keep power on for three days, said Matthias Kannes, a Gaza-based official for Doctors Without Borders. The group said the two hospitals it runs in Gaza were running out of surgical equipment, antibiotics, fuel and other supplies.
Ghassan Abu Sitta, a reconstructive surgeon at al-Shifa, said he had 50 patients waiting to go to the operating room.
“We’re already beyond the capacity of the system to cope,” he said. The health system “has the rest of the week before it collapses, not just because of the diesel. All supplies are running short.”
The Palestinian Red Crescent said other hospitals’ generators will run out in five days. Residential buildings, unable to store as much diesel, likely will go dark sooner.
Egypt and international groups have been calling for humanitarian corridors into Gaza. Convoys stood loaded with fuel and food Wednesday on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, but were unable to enter Gaza, an Egyptian security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.
In Gaza's Jabalia refugee camp, rescue workers and civilians carried men covered with blood and soot toward ambulances after strikes toppled buildings. Streets were left blanketed with metal, chunks of concrete and thick dust.
Medical teams and rescuers struggled to enter other areas where roads were too damaged, including Gaza City's al-Karama district, where a “large number” were killed or wounded, according to the Hamas-run Interior Ministry. Strikes have killed at least four Red Crescent paramedics, the organization said.
The risk of the war spreading was evident Wednesday after the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah fired anti-tank missiles at an Israeli military position and claimed to have killed and wounded troops.
The Israeli army shelled the area in southern Lebanon where the attack was launched.
US President Joe Biden called Saturday's Hamas attack “the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.”
“This attack was a campaign of pure cruelty, not just hate, but pure cruelty against the Jewish people,” Biden said at a meeting with Jewish community leaders at the White House.
On Tuesday, he warned other countries and armed groups against entering the war. The US is already rushing munitions and military equipment to Israel and has deployed a carrier strike group to the eastern Mediterranean as deterrence. (AP-Yonhap)
