Over 10,000 Palestinians have died in Gaza, according to the health ministry administered by Hamas, which made the announcement on Monday. Israel has been bombarding Gaza for almost a month, and its attack against Palestinian forces appears to be getting stronger.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged not to back down in the face of growing calls for a ceasefire. Hamas carried out an attack on October 7 that resulted in 1,400 deaths in Israel, the majority of them civilians, and the kidnapping of over 240 hostages, according to Israeli officials.
A health ministry spokeswoman told a press conference that hundreds of overnight attacks had raised the dead toll in Gaza to 10,022, the most of whom were women and children.
Two pediatric hospitals and Gaza’s only psychiatric hospital were hit, the ministry said, after the director of another hospital in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza reported he had counted 58 dead.
“These are massacres! They destroyed three houses over the heads of their inhabitants — women and children,” one resident, Mahmud Meshmesh, told AFP.
“We have already taken 40 bodies out of the rubble,” he said as crowds prayed around corpses wrapped in white shrouds.
The Israeli military claims that Hamas has dug tunnels beneath Gaza’s hospitals, schools, and houses of worship to conceal militants, stockpile weapons and ammo, and plot assaults. Hamas has refuted these accusations.
By encircling Gaza City more tightly and flooding the northern half of the Gaza Strip, ground forces armed with tanks have divided the region in half.
The United States, an ally of Israel, dispatched its senior diplomat, Antony Blinken, on a fast-paced Middle East visit that concluded in Turkey on Monday. Once again, his host lobbied for an Israeli ceasefire, something that Washington has refused to support.
The heads of major United Nations agencies issued a joint statement also calling for a ceasefire inside the territory of 2.4 million people where an Israeli siege has cut off most water, food and fuel supplies.
“It’s been 30 days. Enough is enough. This must stop now,” the statement said.
The Israeli army said on Monday it had pounded Gaza with “significant” strikes on 450 targets, having said last week it had already hit over 12,000. It also reported seizing a Hamas command post and killing a Hamas commander accused of helping organize the October 7 attacks and planning future incursions.
“We will take the fight to Hamas wherever they are — underground, above ground,” Israeli army spokesman Jonathan Conricus said, referring to Hamas tunnels, and repeating calls for civilians to leave the urban war zone.
“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.”
