Gaza: Israel Forms Emergency Government As Death Toll Hits 2,300

Israel has formed an emergency unity government to collectively prosecute the ongoing war with the Palestinian Hamas militants.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to form a war cabinet with former defence minister and the main opposition party leader, Benny Gantz, a joint statement from Gantz’s National Unity party said.

Israel’s death toll rose to 1,200 with over 2,700 wounded, its military said, from Hamas militants’ weekend rampage after breaching the border fence enclosing Gaza on Saturday in a shock mass infiltration of nearby Israeli towns and villages.

Israeli reprisal attacks on blockaded Gaza have killed 1,100 people and wounded 5,339, Gaza’s Health Ministry said. Some 535 residential buildings had been destroyed leaving around 250,000 homeless, Hamas officials said. Most of the displaced were in U.N.-designated shelters, others huddling in shattered streets.

This brings the total number of deaths to 2,300 with over 7,000 injured.

United States (US) President Joe Biden has issued a warning seemingly aimed at Hamas’ Iranian supporters not to exploit the Gaza conflagration to start a wider Middle East war.

Hamas’ armed wing, the Al Qassam Brigades, said it was still fighting inside Israel on Wednesday, and the Israeli military said a tank fired on three militants in a vehicle near Nir Am kibbutz, just outside northeast Gaza, killed them.

Israel has deployed formations of tanks and armoured vehicles near Gaza in possible preparation for a ground offensive into the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave.

Hamas’s armed wing said it had targeted the northern Israeli coastal city of Haifa with an R60 rocket. There were no immediate reports of casualties after sirens sounded in Haifa and nearby towns.

Israel has vowed swift punishment for the deadliest Palestinian militant attack in its 75-year history, which 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.

Israel has put Gaza under “total siege” to stop food and fuel reaching the enclave of 2.3 million people, many poor and dependent on aid. Hamas media said on Wednesday electricity went out after the only power station stopped working.

With Palestinian rescue workers overwhelmed, others in the crowded coastal strip joined the search for bodies in rubble.