Oct. 10 (UPI) — Israel Defense Forces and Hamas exchanged rocket fire throughout the day on Tuesday as fighting between the two continued to rage in the fourth day of the conflict.
The IDF said it launched massive airstrikes against a neighborhood of Gaza City, targeting more than 100 sites, calling it a “nest of terror.” The neighborhood, called by the IDF al-Furqan after a mosque in the area, was used by Hamas to launch attacks against Israel. The army said it used a dozen of fighter jets in the attack.
The IDF said overnight that it launched aircraft strikes that killed Hamas senior leaders Joad Abu Shmalah and Zachariah Abu Ma’amar.
One social media image showed a Hamas rocket that appeared to have been launched from the Gaza Strip reportedly landing in the northern West Bank and never making it to Israel. The rocket landed near Jenin.
Air sirens went off in the southern Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon and nearby towns late Tuesday afternoon after Hamas launched a barrage of rockets in their direction. The group had warned citizens earlier that it would fire on the city.
“In response to the enemy’s crime of displacing our people and forcing them to flee their homes in several areas of the Gaza Strip, we give the residents of the occupied city of Ashkelon a deadline to leave before 5 p.m.,” Abu Obeida, the spokesperson for Hamas’s Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades said in a post on Telegram.
The IDF said Tuesday it had regained control of its border with the Gaza Strip after Hamas militants blasted through the barrier on Saturday during the dawn of their attack.
IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said the military was establishing a barrier of tanks, aircraft and vessels, as well as mines, along breaches in the border to prevent entrance or exit from the Palestinian enclave, but fighting continued.
“The IDF clears the surrounding area with 35 battalions, four lieutenant generals who command different sectors, alongside the commander of the Gaza Division,” Hagari said.
“There are tens of thousands of fighters in the area. In the last day, several operational events took place on the northern border — the IDF acted resolutely in the face of these events, from the ground and from the air, quickly and accurately.”
Hagari added that the military had also not identified any tunnels from Gaza into Israeli territory.
The IDF said about 300,000 reservists have been rallied for a potential ground invasion into Gaza but there are fears that some Hamas fighters are hiding inside Israel.
The Israeli Air Force added that “hundreds of IDF reservists who were abroad” were flown back to take part in the war.
Israeli officials said more than 900 people have died at the hands of Hamas since fighting started on Saturday, including 11 U.S. residents. The IDF said that number includes 123 of its soldiers as they combated Hamas.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health said 765 Palestinians have died in the Gaza Strip Bank since Saturday with more than 4,000 injured as Israel responded to the Hamas attack.
“We are fighting for our home,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday night. “We are in an existential war that we will win. We always knew who Hamas was, and now the whole world knows, Hamas is ISIS — and we will defeat it just as the civilized world defeated ISIS. This bitter enemy wanted war — and he will get war.”
Hamas claimed to have about 100 hostages that they have threatened to execute if IDF did not withdraw from Gaza. The Israeli military had been hammering suspected Hamas hideouts within Gaza since the start of the war.
