(Reuters) – Israel bombed Gaza overnight ahead of a potential ground assault against Hamas while U.S. President Joe Biden condemned the Palestinian militant group’s surprise attack as “sheer evil” and issued a warning seemingly aimed at its Iranian backers.
Israel’s death toll reached 1,200 with more than 2,700 wounded, its military said, from Hamas gunmen’s hours-long rampage after breaching the fence around Gaza on Saturday.
Israel has vowed swift punishment for the deadliest Palestinian militant attack in its history that left corpses strewn around a music festival and a kibbutz community.
The military said dozens of its fighter jets struck more than 200 targets in a neighbourhood of Gaza City overnight that it said had been used by Hamas to launch its attacks.
“Hamas wanted a change and it will get one. What was in Gaza will no longer be,” Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told soldiers near the fence on Tuesday. “We started the offensive from the air, later on we will also come from the ground.”
With Palestinian rescue workers overwhelmed, others in the crowded coastal strip joined the search for bodies in rubble.
“I was sleeping here when the house collapsed on top of me ,” one man cried as he and others used flashlights on the stairs of a building hit by missiles to find anyone trapped.
In another sign of the crisis widening, Israeli shelling hit southern Lebanese towns after a rocket attack by the powerful armed group Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran.
Scores of Israelis and others from abroad were taken to Gaza as hostages, some paraded through streets. Both sides have said many women and children were among the dead and wounded.
Israel said it was stepping up issuing firearms to licensed citizens, predicting possible friction between its Arab minority and majority Jews amid calls for more protests in support of Gaza’s Palestinians.
RISKS AHEAD
A ground offensive carries risks for Israel, notably to the hostages held in the narrow, densely populated Gaza Strip which is tightly controlled by Hamas. It has threatened to execute a captive for each home hit without warning.
Palestinian sources said one of the homes Israeli air strikes hit in Gaza overnight killed three relatives of Palestinian militant Mohammed Deif, the secretive mastermind of the assault, planned for two years.
Israel withdrew troops from Gaza in 2005 after 38 years of occupation. Since Hamas seized power there in 2007, Israel has kept it under blockade, creating conditions among its 2.3 million inhabitants which Palestinians say are intolerable.
Washington said it was talking with Israel and Egypt about the idea of safe passage for civilians from Gaza, with food in short supply and fuel running out.
The cross-border fire from Lebanon was the fourth consecutive day of violence there and more shells launched from Syrian territory landed in open areas in Israel on Tuesday.
“We do not yet know if these rockets were fired by the Syrian armed forces, by any of the many Iranian militias that exist and are welcomed by the Syrian regime, or Hezbollah or any other action,” said Israel’s Lieutenant Colonel Conricus.
INTERNATIONAL REACTION
At the White House, Biden called the Hamas attacks “an act of sheer evil” and said Washington was rushing additional military assistance to Israel, including ammunition and interceptors to replenish the Iron Dome aerial defence system.
He urged Israel to follow the “law of war” and said the U.S. had strengthened its presence in the region by moving an aircraft carrier strike group and fighter aircraft.
“Let me say again to any country, any organization, anyone thinking of taking advantage of the situation, I have one word: don’t,” said Biden, in an assumed reference to Iran and its proxies.
U.S. officials say they do not have evidence Iran orchestrated the attacks, but point to its long-term support for Hamas.
Former Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal called for protests across the Arab world on Friday in support of the Palestinians.
With Israel on a war footing, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right wing coalition and opposition leaders were close to forming an emergency unity government.
Countries including Fiji, South Korea, Denmark, the Czech Republic and Canada scrambled to evacuate citizens from Israel, many stranded after major airlines cancelled flights.
‘NO PLACE IS SAFE’
Palestinian media said Israeli airstrikes had hit homes in Gaza City, the southern city of Khan Younis and in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza. Residents on social media said many buildings had collapsed, sometimes trapping as many as 50 people.
The United Nations said more than 180,000 Gazans had been made homeless, many huddling on streets or in schools.
“The situation is crazy – literally no place is safe. I’ve personally evacuated three times since yesterday,” 22-year-old Plestia Alaqad said on Tuesday.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said Israeli strikes had since Saturday destroyed more than 22,600 residential units and 10 health facilities and damaged 48 schools.
“Such blatant dehumanization and attempts to bomb a people into submission, to use starvation as a method of warfare, and to eradicate their national existence are nothing less than genocidal,” Palestinian U.N. envoy Riyad Mansour wrote to the U.N. Security Council.
Violence also flared in Arab East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank, where officials say 21 Palestinians have been killed and 130 injured in clashes with Israeli forces since Saturday.
By Dan Williams, Nidal Al-Mughrabi and Nandita Bose
