JERUSALEM: Israel said it recaptured Gaza border areas from Hamas militants as the war's death toll passed 3,000 on Tuesday, the fourth day of fierce fighting since the Islamists launched a surprise attack.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned Israel's military campaign following Saturday's onslaught was only the start of a sustained war to destroy Hamas and "change the Middle East".
Fears of a regional conflagration have surged amid expectations of a looming Israeli ground incursion into Gaza, the crowded enclave from where Hamas launched its land, air and sea attack on the Jewish Sabbath. The death toll in Israel has surged above 900 from the worst attack in the country's 75-year history, while Gaza officials have reported 765 people killed so far.
Hamas gunmen killed more than 100 people in the kibbutz of Beeri alone, said Moti Bukjin, a volunteer with the charity Zaka that recovers bodies in accordance with Jewish law. “They shot everyone,” he told AFP. “They murdered in cold blood children, babies, old people — everyone.”
Netanyahu compared the large-scale slaughter of Israeli civilians to the atrocities committed by the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, when they controlled vast swathes of Syria and Iraq. "Hamas terrorists bound, burned and executed children," a seething Netanyahu said in a televised address to the grieving nation late Monday. “They are savages. Hamas is ISIS.”
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