IDF regains control of all towns on Gaza border

(TIMES OF ISRAEL) The Israel Defense Forces’ top spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, has said Israeli troops have regained control of all towns on the Gaza border.

He said incidents of clashes between troops and Palestinian terrorists in the last few hours have been “isolated.”

Hagari said that in the Shaar Hanegev Regional Council three terrorists were killed by troops; in Be’eri one was killed; in Holit and Sufa five were killed; and in Alumim four were killed.

He said that currently, there is no fighting in any of the towns.

“It is possible there are still terrorists in the area,” Hagari said, adding that breaches of the Gaza border barrier will be physically secured by tanks, which will be supported by combat helicopters and drones.

He said the army has evacuated 15 out of 24 towns on the border, and will continue to evacuate the others in the coming day. Sderot will not be evacuated at this stage, he said.

Regarding the draft of reservists, Hagari said the IDF “has never mobilised so many reservists so quickly — 300,000 reservists in 48 hours.”

Overnight the Israeli Air Force pounded Gaza with airstrikes as part of its effort to “devastate the capabilities of the Hamas terror group,” two days after the terror group unleashed carnage on an unprecedented scale in Israel, killing at least 700 civilians and security personnel in the deadliest single day in the nation’s history.

Among the 500 targets hit overnight were eight Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad war rooms; a building housing Hamas operatives; several high-rise towers housing Hamas assets; a command centre used by a senior official in Hamas’s naval forces; an “operational asset used by Hamas” located within a mosque in Jabaliya; an asset used by the terror group for intelligence; and three tunnels in the Beit Hanoun area in northern Gaza.

Israel formally declared a state of war on Sunday as the death toll from the massive Hamas attack rose above 700 and was expected to rise further, with the fate of over a hundred people abducted and taken into the Gaza Strip still unclear.

The Government Press Office, a body that operates under the Prime Minister’s Office, said that the number of hostages in Gaza was over 100. Hamas and Islamic Jihad boasted Sunday night that they were holding some 130 Israeli hostages, claiming this included high-ranking army officials.

ZAKA, a volunteer group that handles human remains after terror attacks and other disasters, announced Sunday night that among the dead were some 260 mostly young Israelis mowed down by Hamas gunmen who invaded an outdoor music festival in southern Israel.

In Kfar Aza, seven terrorists were identified in the town’s vicinity, and the mouth of a tunnel near the kibbutz was found as well, Hagari said.

While it was known that the terrorists infiltrated by land, sea, and air, this is the first tunnel found in the current conflict. Israel had invested millions of dollars in an advanced underground wall of sensors and obstacles that was supposed to make tunnelling into the country impossible.

Israel vowed to take the fight back to Hamas; Israeli jets and helicopter gunships hit over 1,148 sites in Gaza since Saturday, as reserves troops girded for a wide offensive against Gaza-based terrorists. An American aircraft carrier, accompanied by fighter jets and gunboats, steamed toward the region in a show of support for Israel’s war effort as the United States offered unwavering support.

The dead included at least 73 soldiers, including top officers, and 34 police officers.

Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer said he understood the actual death toll to be significantly higher. “There will probably be more hundreds, several hundred more,” he said.

As remains of the dead were recovered and taken for identification, desperate parents were among those who lined up at a missing person’s centre that was set up near Ben Gurion Airport on Saturday evening. Relatives were told to bring items such as toothbrushes that could contain DNA.

The number of wounded also continued to tick upward throughout the day. The Health Ministry said late Sunday that 2,382 people were treated at hospitals, including 22 people in critical condition and hundreds more also fighting for their lives.