The Israeli military says it has called up an unprecedented 300,000 reservists and is imposing a total blockade of the Gaza Strip, signs it could be planning a ground assault there to defeat Hamas after it launched a humiliating attack.
In a further signal of Israel’s rapid shift on to a war footing, a cabinet member from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party said it could set up a national unity government joined by opposition leaders within hours.
Hamas’ armed wing said it fired rockets towards Jerusalem in response to Israel’s bombing of civilian homes in Gaza.
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Four people in an area on the outskirts of the city were wounded, the ambulance service said.
Palestinian fighters were still holed up in several locations inside Israel two days after they killed hundreds of Israelis and seized dozens of hostages in a raid that shattered Israel’s reputation of invincibility.
Israel’s Kan TV said the death toll from the Hamas attack had climbed to 800.
Netanyahu told mayors of southern towns hit by Saturday’s surprise assault that Israel’s response would “change the Middle East”.
In Hamas-controlled Gaza, Israel pressed on with its most intensive retaliatory strikes ever, which have killed more than 500 people since Saturday.
Defence Minister Yoav Gallant announced Israel’s tightened blockade which would keep even food and fuel from reaching the strip, home to 2.3 million people.
At the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, men clambered on a pancaked building to pull an infant’s tiny body from the rubble, carrying it down through the crowd below amid still-smouldering remains of bombed buildings.
That air strike killed and wounded dozens, according to the territory’s health ministry.
Israeli troops “killed a number of armed suspects that infiltrated into Israeli territory from Lebanese territory,” the military said, adding helicopters “are currently striking in the area”.
An official with Hezbollah denied that the group had mounted any operation into Israel while the Al Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement, claimed responsibility for an attack at the Lebanon-Israel border.
In Israel’s south, scene of the deadly Hamas attack, Israel’s chief military spokesman said troops had re-established control of communities inside Israel that had been overrun but that isolated clashes continued as some gunmen remained active.
“We are now carrying out searches in all of the communities and clearing the area,” chief military spokesman Rear-Admiral Daniel Hagari said.
The announcement that 300,000 reservists had already been activated in just two days added to speculation that Israel could be contemplating a ground assault of Gaza, a territory it abandoned nearly two decades ago.
“We have never drafted so many reservists on such a scale,” Hagari said.
“We are going on the offensive.”
Palestinians reported receiving calls and mobile phone audio messages from Israeli security officers telling them to leave areas mainly in the northern and eastern territories of Gaza, and warning that the army would operate there.
Hamas says its attack was justified by the plight of Gaza under a 16-year blockade and the deadliest Israeli crackdown for years in the occupied West Bank.
Mainstream Palestinian groups who deplored the attacks said the violence was nonetheless predictable, with a peace process frozen for nearly a decade and ultra-nationalist Israeli leaders talking of annexing Palestinian land once and for all.
Israel and its allies said nothing justified the intentional mass killing of civilians.
The attackers gunned down scores of young Israelis at an outdoor desert dance party — media reported 260 killed there.
A day later, dozens of survivors were still emerging from hiding.
The site was littered with wrecked and abandoned cars.
“It was just a massacre, a total massacre,” said Arik Nani, who had been celebrating his 26th birthday and escaped by hiding for hours in a field.
In Gaza, footage obtained by Reuters showed dozens of people climbing over collapsed buildings in search of survivors, the air still dusty from impact.
Sirens rang out as emergency teams put out cars that had caught fire.
“The man you see is one martyr of dozens. This place is packed with residents and people who were displaced,” a man said in the video as people pulled a body from the rubble.
At least 560 Palestinians have been killed and 2900 wounded in Israeli air strikes on the blockaded enclave since Saturday, said Gaza’s Health Ministry.
“The price the Gaza Strip will pay will be a very heavy one that will change reality for generations,” Defence Minister Gallant said in Ofakim, one of the towns that had been attacked.
Israeli officials have not confirmed any plans for a ground assault but have discussed what it might entail.
Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter likened a possible operation to a 2002 sweep of the West Bank in which Palestinian cities were encircled and then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat besieged in his headquarters.
“Israel cannot agree to a situation in which military terrorist organisations will exist at a proximity of a few hundred meters, a kilometre, and so all of these capabilities will be destroyed,” he told Israel’s Channel 12 TV on Sunday.
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