More than 1,300 people killed as Israel pummels Gaza and battles continue between Hamas fighters and Israeli soldiers. A relative reacts as Palestinians carry casualties from under the rubble of a house destroyed in Israeli strikes, in Rafah in the southern Gaza StripMore than 800 Israelis and some 500 Palestinians have been killed amid heavy fighting and bombardment following the largest attack by the Palestinian armed group Hamas against Israel in decades. Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Monday authorities would impose a total blockade on the Gaza Strip, cutting electricity and blocking food and fuel supplies as part of \u201ca complete siege\u201d on the Hamas-run enclave. It came as Gaza\u2019s Ministry of Health said at least 510 Palestinians had been killed and 2,751 more had been wounded in Israeli air raids on the enclave since Saturday, when Hamas launched its multipronged offensive on Israel. In Israel, the number of people killed has reached 800, with more than 2,200 also wounded. The Israeli military said it hit more than 1,000 targets in Gaza, including air raids that levelled much of the town of Beit Hanoon, known as Erez to Israelis, in the enclave\u2019s northeast corner. The United Nations said more than 123,000 Palestinians in Gaza had been displaced amid the intense bombardment. In Gaza, a tiny enclave of 2.3 million people sealed off by an Israeli-Egyptian blockade for 16 years, residents feared further escalation. An internatioanl reporter \u2019s Jamileh Abu Zanoona, reporting from Gaza, said the territory\u2019s Shujayea neighbourhood was targeted by heavy bombardment on Monday. A fourth mosque was destroyed in an overnight Israeli air raid on the Yarmouk neighbourhood in Gaza, forcing thousands more people to evacuate their homes, an international reporter\u00a0Youmna ElSayed reported. \u201cDozens of homes were destroyed and are inhabitable,\u201d ElSayed said. Israel\u2019s chief military spokesperson, Daniel Hagari, told reporters that Israel has taken \u201ccontrol\u201d of its communities following the mass incursion of Hamas fighters. Hagari said there had been some isolated incidents on Monday morning, but that \u201cat this stage, there is no fighting in the communities\u201d. He added that \u201cthere might still be terrorists in the region\u201d. Earlier, another spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Hecht, acknowledged that it was \u201ctaking more time than we expected to get things back into a defensive, security posture\u201d. Israeli officials said 70 additional Hamas fighters infiltrated Be\u2019eri kibbutz, which the military has been unable to wrest from Hamas, overnight. The army has called up about 300,000 reservists and said in a statement that Israel would aim to end Hamas\u2019s rule of Gaza. \u201cWe have never drafted so many reservists on such a scale,\u201d Hagari said. \u201cWe are going on the offensive.\u201d The attackers shot dead dozens of young Israelis \u2013 media reported as many as 260 killed \u2013 at an outdoor desert dance party. A day later, dozens of survivors were still emerging from hiding. The site was littered with wrecked and abandoned cars. \u201cIt was just a massacre, a total massacre,\u201d Arik Nani, who had been celebrating his 26th birthday and escaped by hiding for hours in a field, told an internatioanl\u00a0news agency. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have said they are holding more than 130 captives, adding they would be traded for the release of thousands of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. The captives are believed to include soldiers and civilians \u2013 including women, children and older adults \u2013 and to be comprised of mostly Israelis but also people of other nationalities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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