Hamas confirms several of its top commanders have been killed in airstrikes

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Hamas confirmed that several of its top commanders were killed in air strikes on the Gaza Strip today as Israel launched massive bombardments in retaliation for hundreds of missiles fired at its cities.

Israel has vowed to bring ‘total, long-term quiet’ to the region despite growing international alarm at the numbers of civilian casualties being sustained in its barrages on densely populated areas. 

The Palestinian death toll rose to 43 on Wednesday, including 13 children and another 230 people wounded.

Hamas said the commander of its Gaza City Brigade, Bassem Issa, was among those ‘martyred’ in the strikes.

Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, named another three slain Hamas officers: Jamaa Tahla, responsible for the improved accuracy of the group’s rockets; Jamal Zabeda, chief of ‘special projects’ in the munitions department; and Hazzem Hatib, head engineer in the munitions wing.

The militants have launched more than 1,000 rockets at Israel since Monday, killing five civilians, including an Arab-Israeli girl in the city of Lod in the early hours of this morning.  

‘The army will continue to attack to bring a total, long-term quiet. Only when we reach that goal will we be able to speak about a truce,’ Defence Minister Benny Gantz said today from the southern town of Ashkelon where two Israeli women were killed by Hamas rockets on Tuesday.

The United Nations has warned the two sides they risk a ‘full-scale war’ if there is not an urgent ceasefire. 

‘Stop the fire immediately. We’re escalating towards a full-scale war. Leaders on all sides have to take the responsibility of de-escalation,’ Tor Wennesland UN Special Envoy to the Middle East tweeted.   

Just after daybreak, the Israeli Air Force unleashed dozens of strikes within the course of a few minutes with what appeared to be bunker buster bombs targeting underground Hamas infrastructure.   

The Israeli Defence Forces later dispatched two infantry brigades to the area of a downed militant drone, indicating preparations for a possible ground invasion. 

Boris Johnson condemned the spiralling conflict this morning hours after his former counterpart Donald Trump blamed ‘weak’ Joe Biden for allowing things to escalate.

‘I am urging Israel and the Palestinians to step back from the brink and for both sides to show restraint,’ the Prime Minister said. ‘The UK is deeply concerned by the growing violence and civilian casualties.’ 

Despite international condemnation for the bloodshed, the worst since the 2014 war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected calls for ceasefire, vowing last night to ‘step up’ attacks.  

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said in turn that ‘if Israel wants to escalate, we are ready for it’. 

The tensions began a month ago in Jerusalem, where heavy-handed police tactics during Ramadan and the threatened eviction of dozens of Muslim neighbourhoods ignited protests and clashes with police. On Monday, a riot on Temple Mount left hundreds of Palestinians wounded before Hamas started launching rockets.

The International Criminal Court at the Hague announced this morning it was looking at possible ‘crimes’ committed as the ferocious cross-border engagement entered its third day. 

‘I note with great concern the escalation of violence in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as well as in and around Gaza, and the possible commission of crimes under the Rome Statute (which founded the ICC)’, Fatou Bensouda tweeted. 

More than a hundred Hamas rockets were launched at Israel’s most populous city, Tel Aviv, last night after a tower block in Gaza suspected of being a Hamas headquarters was destroyed by an Israeli air strike.

The IDF have assassinated several top militant commanders, including Hassan Kaogi, head of the Hamas intelligence department, in their airstrikes. 

In a statement, the army said it carried out a ‘complex and first-of-its-kind operation.’ Those targeted, it said, were ‘a key part of the Hamas “General Staff”‘ and considered close to the head of the group’s military wing. 

Hamas later confirmed they had lost several of their top brass, including its military chief in Gaza City, Bassem Issa. 

The Israelis accuse the Palestinian fighters of using their own people as human shields, but the civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip have only hardened the position of the extremists who have launched hundreds more missiles. 

In Israel’s central city of Lod, a girl and her father were killed in the early hours of Wednesday by rocket fire from Gaza. Israel’s foreign ministry identified the girl as 16-year-old Nadin Awad, an Arab Israeli.

Her cousin, Ahmad Ismail, told public broadcaster Kan that he was near Nadin when she was killed alongside her father Khalil Awad, 52.

‘I was at home, we heard the noise of the rocket. It happened so quickly. Even if we had wanted to run somewhere, we don’t have a safe room,’ Ismail told Kan. 

Lod also saw riots after thousands of mourners joined a funeral for an Arab man killed by a suspected Jewish gunman the previous night.

The crowd fought with police, and set a synagogue and some 30 vehicles, including a police car, on fire, Israeli media reported.

Paramedics said a 56-year-old man was seriously hurt after his car was pelted with stones. 

The Israeli President Reuven Rivlin described it as a ‘pogrom’ carried out by a ‘bloodthirsty Arab mob,’ after Netanyahu declared a state of emergency in the mixed Jewish-Arab city.

‘The sight of the pogrom in Lod and the disturbances across the country by an incited and bloodthirsty Arab mob, injuring people, damaging property and even attacking sacred Jewish spaces is unforgivable,’ Rivlin said. 

Yair Revivo, mayor of the city, last night called for army back-up to help secure the area, saying ‘civil war’ was breaking out.

‘This is Kristallnacht in Lod,’ said Revivo, in reference to the Nazi pogrom against German Jews in 1938.

‘I have called on the prime minister to declare a state of emergency in Lod. To call in the IDF. To impose a curfew. To restore quiet. There is a failure of governance. 

‘This is a giant incident – an Intifada of Arab Israelis. All the work we have done here for years [on coexistence] has gone down the drain.’ 

Netanhayu made a pre-dawn tour of the city to declare a state of emergency.

‘We will not tolerate this; we need to restore calm,’ Netanyahu said in Lod. ‘If this isn’t an emergency situation, I don’t know what is. We are talking about life and death here.’   

Asked whether the actions of the police against protesters may have played a role, he shut down the suggestion, saying: ‘These events have no excuse; this is fundamental hate.’  

It comes after the PM, speaking after two women were killed in Hamas strikes yesterday, said he ‘deplored’ the deaths in Israel, adding that the country’s military would ‘further increase both the intensity and the rate’ of its own air strikes against Gaza.

‘Hamas will be hit in ways that it does not expect,’ Netanyahu said. ‘We have eliminated commanders, hit many important targets and we have decided to attack harder and increase the pace of attacks.’ 

The homes of three Hamas commanders were destroyed overnight on Wednesday.

A significant barrage had begun by 3am, with Israel firing into the Gaza Strip.

‘In response to HUNDREDS of rockets in the last 24 hours, the IDF has struck a number of significant terror targets and terror operatives across the Gaza Strip, marking our largest strike since 2014,’ the IDF confirmed. 

‘We are currently striking more terror targets in Gaza.’ 

In Israel, five people including three women have been killed. 

One of the three women was in her 60s and another in her 80s, and died during Hamas rocket attacks earlier on Tuesday.

The third woman, aged 50, was killed on Tuesday evening when a rocket hit a building in the Tel Aviv suburb of Rishon Lezion.

The renewed confrontation, following weeks of tensions and clashes in the contested Jerusalem, was sparked on Monday evening when Hamas fired a barrage of missiles towards Jerusalem. 

It continued into the early hours of Wednesday morning, with more rockets being fired by the Islamist group into Tel Aviv, and by Israel into Gaza.

On Tuesday afternoon, Trump posted to his website, saying that America ‘will always strongly support Israel’s right to defend itself’ as he criticised Biden over the growing crisis. 

Earlier, the White House had said Biden was being briefed on the escalating situation.    

Israel’s Iron Dome defence system continued to struggle with the volume of rockets being fired from Gaza on Tuesday evening, after an Israeli air strike caused a 13-storey residential building to collapse in Gaza City. 

Residents of the collapsed residential block and the surrounding area had been warned to evacuate the area around an hour before the air strike, according to witnesses, and there were no reports of casualties two hours after it collapsed.

Shortly after the attack, Hamas – the Islamist group that rules inside Gaza – and the Islamic Jihad group said they would respond by firing rockets at Tel Aviv, which they did by firing  210 rockets towards Beersheba and Tel Aviv in response to the bombing of the tower buildings in Gaza City.

Air raid sirens and explosions were heard around the city, and the skies were lit up by the streaks of multiple interceptor missiles launched towards the incoming rockets.

Pedestrians ran for shelter, and diners streamed out of Tel Aviv restaurants while others flattened themselves on pavements as the sirens sounded.

The Israel Airports Authority said it had halted take-offs at Tel Aviv airport ‘to allow defence of the nation’s skies’. 

Video broadcast on Israeli Channel 12 television showed interceptor missiles rising above the runways.

‘We are now carrying out our promise,’ Hamas’s armed wing said. 

‘The Qassam Brigades are launching their biggest rocket strike against Tel Aviv and its suburbs, with 130 rockets, in response to the enemy’s targeting of residential towers.’ 

The sound of the outgoing rockets could be heard in Gaza. As the rockets rose into the skies, mosques across Gaza blared with chants of ‘God is great,’ ‘victory to Islam’ and ‘resistance.’

One rocket struck a bus in the central city of Holon, just south of Tel Aviv. Medics said three people, including a five-year-old girl, were wounded and the bus went up in flames.

Israel said it had sent 80 jets to bomb Gaza, and dispatched infantry and armour to reinforce the tanks already gathered on the border, evoking memories of the last ground incursion into Gaza to stop rocket attacks, in 2014.

More than 2,100 Gazans were killed in the seven-week war that followed, according to the Gaza health ministry, along with 73 Israelis, and thousands of homes in Gaza were razed.

The U.N. Security will hold emergency consultations Wednesday on the escalating violence between Palestinians and Israelis.

The U.N. Mideast envoy, Tor Wennesland, is expected to brief the 15 council members virtually at the closed meeting, which is being called at the request of China, Tunisia and Norway.

China holds the council presidency this month and its U.N. mission confirms plans for the second emergency meeting in three days. It is an indication of growing international concern about the conflict and where it might lead.

The U.N.’s most powerful body has not yet taken any action.

China, Tunisia and Norway proposed a draft statement at Monday’s meeting expressing ‘grave concern’ at escalating tensions and calling on Israel to cease evictions.  

Egypt was been trying to broker a cease-fire into Tuesday, but the cycle of violence was gaining momentum. 

Even before the Israeli deaths, the Israeli military said it was sending troop reinforcements to the Gaza border and the defence minister Benny Gantz ordered the mobilisation of 5,000 reserve soldiers.

But contrary to Egypt’s efforts, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei urged Palestinians to ‘build up power’ on state television, saying ‘Zionists (Israel) only understand the language of force’. 

Iran and Israel consider one-another arch enemies, with Iran refusing to recognise the existence of Israel as a state since the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

Iranian state TV on Tuesday quoted Khamenei as saying that it was a duty of every state to take a stand and condemn this ‘evil, criminal, brutal and cruel’ action by Israel. 

Khamenei also said Palestinian need to be empowered in order to ‘force’ Israel to accept their rights.

‘They should make themselves powerful, resist and confront so as to force the other party to withdraw from crime and surrender to what’s right and fair,’ Khamenei said. 

Iran backs anti-Israel militant groups across the region, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip. 

In the U.S., the White House said on Tuesday that Biden was being briefed daily on developments in Jerusalem and Gaza, and has directed his team to engage intensively with senior Israeli and Palestinian officials as well as leaders throughout the Middle East.

Press secretary Jen Psaki said on Tuesday that Biden’s team is communicating a clear and consistent message in support of de escalation.

‘That is our primary focus,’ she said, adding that Biden supports Israel’s ‘legitimate right to defend itself and its people’ and at the same time condemns ongoing ‘rocket attacks by Hamas and other terrorist groups including against Jerusalem.’ 

She added that the Biden administration ‘will also continue to support a two state solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict.’

But on his own website, Trump posted a message saying that ‘America must always stand with Israel and make clear that the Palestinians must end the violence, terror, and rocket attacks, and make clear that the U.S. will always strongly support Israel’s right to defend itself.’

Trump criticised Biden, saying: ‘Because Israel’s adversaries knew that the United States stood strongly with Israel and there would be swift retribution if Israel was attacked. 

‘Under Biden, the world is getting more violent and more unstable because Biden’s weakness and lack of support for Israel is leading to new attacks on our allies.’ 

Tuesday also saw a pipeline belonging to an Israeli state-owned energy company hit in a rocket attack from Gaza, an Israeli government official and an energy sector official told Reuters.

Video broadcast by Channel 12 showed flames rising from what appeared to be a large fuel vat near the Israeli Mediterranean city of Ashkelon, south of Tel Aviv.

Operations at a power plant in Ashkelon were not interrupted, Channel 13 TV said.  

In Israel, residents of Ashkelon have been running to shelters as air raid sirens wail. 

‘At around 5am, we were woken by sirens. We had to hide in the wardrobe because there is no shelter in the house,’ said Shelly Belayev, whose building was heavily damaged, its facade blackened and an apartment devastated. 

‘There was a very strong explosion, I have never heard a sound like it. I quickly realised the missile fell here,’ she said. 

‘I went outside, I was in shock.’

Since the sirens began late Monday, barrages of rockets launched from the Hamas-controlled Palestinian enclave have rained down on the coastal city, located just north of the Gaza Strip.

The deluge continued on Tuesday, with Hamas’ armed wing the Qassam Brigades saying it had fired 137 rockets on Ashkelon and nearby Ashdod within just five minutes during the afternoon. 

Islamic Jihad, an ally of Hamas, announced on Tuesday that two of its commanders were killed during continued Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip. 

Sources within the group said the strikes in central Gaza, also ‘wounded eight people, including a woman and her two children.’

On Tuesday, Israel Defence Forces (IDF) claimed it had killed a top Hamas Commander in a statement , saying: ‘We just killed the commander of the Hamas anti-tank missile unit, Iyad Fathi Faik Sharir. He was in charge of carrying out anti-tank missile attacks on Israel. Our aircraft are currently striking additional terror targets’. 

Other high-profile Hamas targets are also said to have been killed. One was identified as Samah Abed al-Mamlouk, who the IDF said was in a hideout along with other operatives. He is said to have been in charge of the Islamic Jihad’s rocket arsenal.

Another – Hassan Abu al-Atta – was also killed. He is thought to have been a deputy commander of Islamic Jihad’s Gaza Brigade. He was killed when the IDF struck an eight-storey building in Gaza’s Rimal neighbourhood. 

The United Nations said it was ‘deeply concerned’ over the escalation of violence in the region, warning Israel that Palestinians must be allowed the freedom to congregate and protest. 

‘We condemn all violence and all incitement to violence and ethnic division and provocations,’ spokesman Rupert Colville told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday. 

He added: ‘No force should be used against those exercising their rights peacefully.’ When use of force is necessary, it should comply fully with international human rights standards, he added. 

Colville said the office of UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet was particularly concerned about the impact of the violence on children. 

‘Detained children should be released,’ Colville said. ‘Things need to calm down.’