Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Wednesday to continue Israel’s war on Hamas despite suffering “painful losses” in ground fighting inside the Gaza Strip.
“We have so many important achievements, but also painful losses. We know that every soldier of ours is an entire world,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a televised address after the Army confirmed at least 11 soldiers were killed in ground fighting on Tuesday.
The leader of Palestinian militant group Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, on Wednesday accused Israel of committing “massacres” in the Gaza war to cover its own “defeats”.
Haniyeh, whose Islamist group launched the bloody October 7 attacks on Israel that sparked the Gaza war, accused Israel of “committing barbaric massacres against unarmed civilians”. “Its villainy will not save them from resounding defeat,” he vowed in a speech broadcast by Al Jazeera.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Wednesday that 3,648 children are among 8,796 people killed in Israeli strikes since the war erupted.
The isolated Palestinian enclave, home to 2.3 million people, is in the grip of a severe humanitarian crisis amid a siege imposed by Israel. Over half the population has fled their homes, and supplies of food, medicine, water and fuel are running low. A territory-wide blackout has left hospitals reliant on generators that could shut down soon as Israel has barred all fuel imports.
Israel has been vague about its operations in Gaza, but residents and spokesmen for militant groups say troops appear to be trying to take control of the two main north-south roads.
An estimated 800,000 Palestinians have fled south from Gaza City and other northern areas following Israeli orders to evacuate, but hundreds of thousands remain in the north.
Israel has allowed international aid groups to send more than 200 trucks carrying food and medicine to enter from Egypt over the past 10 days, but aid workers say it’s not nearly enough.
Israel has vowed to crush Hamas’ ability to govern Gaza or threaten it, while also saying it does not plan to reoccupy the territory, from which it withdrew soldiers and settlers in 2005. But it has said little about who would govern Gaza afterwards.
In congressional testimony on Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested that “at some point, what would make the most sense is for an effective and revitalized Palestinian Authority to have governance and ultimately security responsibility for Gaza.”
