As air strikes devastate Gaza, Israel forms unity government to oversee war sparked by Hamas attack

Israel formed an emergency unity government as its jets pounded Gaza and tanks massed around the Palestinian enclave, and the army said it killed three Hamas militants.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to form a war cabinet with former defence minister and centrist opposition party leader Benny Gantz and focus entirely on the conflict.

"Our partnership is not political — it is a shared fate," Mr Gantz said.

"At this time, we are all the soldiers of Israel."

Mr Netanyahu said the people of Israel and its leadership were united.

"We have put aside all differences because the fate of our state is on the line," he said.

Israel's death toll rose to 1,200, including 155 soldiers, its military said, following Hamas militants' weekend rampage after they breached the border fence enclosing Gaza in a shock mass infiltration of nearby Israeli towns and villages.

More than 2,700 people in Israel have been wounded.

Israeli reprisal strikes on blockaded Gaza have killed 1,100 people and wounded 5,339, Gaza's Health Ministry said.

As the fourth day of the war was ending, Mr Netanyahu vowed to "crush and destroy" Hamas in a televised address.

"Every Hamas member is a dead man," he said.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant promised similar.

"We will wipe this thing called Hamas, ISIS-Gaza, off the face of the earth," he said on Wednesday, likening Hamas to the Islamic State group.

"It will cease to exist."

In the West Bank and east Jerusalem, at least 17 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli police.

The Israeli military said its troops had killed at least 1,000 Palestinian gunmen who infiltrated from Gaza as they regained control of the border region.

In Gaza, about 535 residential buildings had been destroyed, leaving around 250,000 homeless, Hamas officials said.

Most of the displaced were in UN-designated shelters, others huddling in shattered streets.

Hamas's armed wing, the Al Qassam Brigades, said it was still fighting inside Israel on Wednesday.

The Israeli military said a tank fired on three militants in a vehicle near Nir Am kibbutz, just outside north-east Gaza, and killed them.

Israel has deployed formations of tanks and armoured vehicles near Gaza in possible preparation for a ground offensive into the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave.

Hamas's armed wing said it had targeted the northern Israeli coastal city of Haifa with an R60 rocket.

There were no immediate reports of casualties after sirens sounded in Haifa and nearby towns.

A Reuters TV crew saw a house hit by an apparent projectile near Metulla in Israel's far north, close to the border with south Lebanon, where the heavily armed Iran-backed Hezbollah group is active.

Israel has vowed swift punishment for the deadliest Palestinian militant attack in its 75-year history.

Its Chief of the General Staff met commanders to discuss their next steps.

"Wherever there are Hamas leaders — the IDF strikes with precision and power," it said, referring to Israel's military.

The military said dozens of its fighter jets struck more than 200 targets in a neighbourhood of Gaza City overnight that it said had been used by Hamas to launch its attacks.

Israel has put Gaza under "total siege" to stop food and fuel from reaching the enclave of 2.3 million people, many poor and dependent on aid. Hamas media said on Wednesday that electricity went out after the only power station stopped working.

With Palestinian rescue workers overwhelmed, others in the crowded coastal strip joined the search for bodies in rubble.

Destruction in Gaza

The government is under intense public pressure to topple Hamas terrorists who stormed through a border fence on Saturday and massacred hundreds of Israelis in their homes, on the streets and at an outdoor music festival.

A ground offensive in the tiny, coastal Gaza Strip, densely populated with 2.3 million people, is likely to dramatically hike casualties in a war that has already claimed at least 2,200 lives on both sides.

So far, Israel has unleashed an increasingly destructive bombardment in Gaza that has flattened entire city blocks and left unknown numbers of bodies beneath mounds of debris.

Hamas continued to fire rockets at Israel on Wednesday, including a heavy barrage at the southern town of Ashkelon.

Israel's Iron Dome missile defence system intercepted at least one rocket.

Some 250,000 people have fled their homes in Gaza — more than a tenth of the population — most crowding into UN schools.

Others crowded into a shrinking number of safe neighbourhoods in the strip of land only 40 kilometres long, wedged among Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea.

Gaza's only power plant shut down on Wednesday afternoon after running out of fuel, the Energy Ministry said.

That leaves only private generators to power homes, hospitals and other facilities. With no fuel able to enter, those are on a ticking clock until individual stocks of diesel run out.

The Gaza Strip's biggest hospital, Al-Shifa, only has enough fuel to keep power on for three days, said Matthias Kannes, a Gaza-based official for Doctors Without Borders.

The group says the two hospitals it runs in Gaza are running out of surgical equipment, antibiotics, fuel and other supplies.

"We consumed three weeks worth of emergency stock in three days," Mr Kannes said.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said other hospitals' generators would run out in five days. Residential buildings, unable to store as much diesel, likely will go dark sooner.

Egypt and international groups have been calling for humanitarian corridors to get aid into Gaza.

Convoys stood loaded with fuel and food on Wednesday on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing but were unable to enter Gaza, an Egyptian security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to talk to the press.

Risk of war spreading

The risk of the war spreading was evident on Wednesday after the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah fired anti-tank missiles at an Israeli military position and claimed to have killed and wounded troops.

The Israeli military confirmed the attack but did not comment on possible casualties.

The Israeli army shelled the area in southern Lebanon where the attack was launched.

After nightfall, Israel urged residents in the north to shelter after "hostile aircraft" were alleged to have entered from Lebanon.

However, they later said the alert was the result of a malfunctioning app.

In the West Bank, Israeli settlers attacked a village south of Nablus, opening fire on Palestinians and killing three, the West Bank-based Palestinian Health Ministry said.

Toppling Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, would likely require prolonged ground fighting and reoccupying Gaza, at least temporarily.

Even then, Hamas has a long history of operating as an underground insurgency in areas controlled by Israel.

Hamas said it launched its attack because Palestinians' suffering has become intolerable under unending Israeli military occupation and increasing settlements in the West Bank and a 16-year-long blockade in Gaza.

Demands for vengeance against Hamas

But the shock, grief and demands for vengeance against Hamas among Israelis have brought a new ferocity after past conflicts with Hamas that saw heavy bombardments of Gaza but ended with the group still in power.

In a new tactic, Israel is warning civilians to evacuate whole Gaza neighbourhoods, rather than just individual buildings, then levelling large swathes in waves of air strikes.

Israel's tone has changed as well.

In past conflicts, military spokesmen repeatedly insisted on the precision of strikes in Gaza, trying to ward off criticism over civilian deaths.

This time, military briefings emphasise the destruction being wreaked.

They say targeted neighbourhoods broadly are being used by Hamas, but rarely give specifics to justify strikes as they did in earlier wars.

The Hamas-run Interior Ministry said Israeli air strikes destroyed the entire al-Karama neighbourhood in Gaza City, with a "large number" of people killed or wounded.

It said medical teams were unable to reach the area because all roads to it were destroyed.

Rescue officials say they have struggled to enter other areas as well.

At least four Red Crescent paramedics have been killed in strikes, the organisation said.

Original Story link: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-12/israel-forms-unity-government-after-hamas-attack-sparks-war/102966350