JERUSALEM/GAZA, (WNAM): Palestinian Islamist group Hamas launched the biggest attack on Israel in years on Saturday, killing at least 100 Israelis and wounding hundreds more in a surprise assault that combined gunmen crossing into Israel with a barrage of rockets fired from Gaza. Israel said the Iran-backed group had declared war as its army confirmed fighting with militants in several Israeli towns and military bases near Gaza and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to retaliate.
Israeli forces responded with airstrikes across the Gaza Strip on multiple residential neighborhoods. “Our enemy will pay a price the type of which it has never known,” Netanyahu said. “We are in a war and we will win it.”
The Palestinian Ministry of Health reported 198 Palestinians had been killed and more than 1,600 injured in the Israeli retaliation since the early morning hours.
Meanwhile, at least 100 Israelis were killed in the Palestinian resistance attack, Israel’s ambulance service said. Around 545 Israelis had been wounded, the health ministry said.
After weeks of escalating tensions along the Gaza-Israel border and deadly confrontations in the occupied West Bank of Palestine, Palestinian resistance factions, primarily led by Hamas, declared a full-scale military operation on Saturday into the towns and settlements located along the separation fence with Gaza.
The Israeli military said it had responded with air strikes into Gaza, where witnesses reported hearing heavy explosions and multiple dead being carried into hospitals.
The attack marked an unprecedented infiltration into Israel by an unknown number of Hamas gunmen crossing from the Gaza Strip, and the heaviest blow for Israel in the conflict with Palestinians since the suicide bombings of the Second Intifada some two decades ago.
