Israel imposed a total siege on the Gaza Strip on Monday and cut off the water supply as it kept bombing targets in the crowded Palestinian enclave.
Israel says its aerial bombardment of the Gaza Strip is one of the largest it has conducted on the besieged territory.
Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades threatens to execute one Israeli captive for every further unannounced Israeli attack on civilians in Gaza.
Israel has killed at least 704 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank since October 7, according to the Palestinian Authority’s health ministry. About 900 people have died in Israel.
Israel said it had called up 3,00,000 army reservists for its ‘Swords of Iron’ campaign, and truck convoys were moving tanks to the south.
Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel would impose a ‘complete siege’ on the long blockaded enclave and stressed what this meant for its 2.3 million people: ‘No electricity, no food, no water, no gas — it’s all closed.’
Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned Gaza civilians to get away from all Hamas sites, which he vowed to turn ‘to rubble.’
Hamas has called on resistance fighters in the occupied West Bank and in Arab and Islamic nations to join its ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’, launched half a century after the 1973 Arab-Israel war.
‘The military operation is still continuing,’ Hossam Badran, a Hamas official, said from Doha, adding that ‘there is currently no chance for negotiation on the issue of prisoners or anything else.’
