The death toll of the ongoing brutal Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip has risen to 313 with over seventeen hundred others injured.
In a statement, Palestinian Ministry of Health strongly condemned the repeated targeting of medical personnel and healthcare facilities by Israeli fighter jets.
Palestinian Ministry of Health urged the international community to intervene and protect medical personnel, healthcare facilities, and ambulances from Israeli attacks.
On the other side, Israeli government has confirmed that at least three hundred Israelis were killed and over fifteen hundred others injured in ongoing military escalation with Palestinian groups in Gaza.
Hamas said its unprecedented offensive by land, air and sea was in response to the desecration of the Al Aqsa Mosque as well as Israeli atrocities against Palestinians over the decades. These include the 16-year blockade of Gaza, Israeli raids inside West Bank cities over the past year, increasing attacks by settlers on Palestinians as well as the growth of illegal settlements.
According to international media reports, Mohammed Deif, a Hamas military commander, said the time has come “for the enemy to understand they cannot keep going without consequences”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to turn the besieged Palestinian enclave into a “deserted island”.
"We will take mighty vengeance for this wicked day," PM Netanyahu said.
"Hamas launched a cruel and wicked war. We will win this war but the price is too heavy to bear," he said. "Hamas wants to murder us all. This is an enemy that murders mothers and children in their homes, in their beds. An enemy that abducts elderly, children, teenage girls."
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said the assault that had begun in Gaza, a narrow strip that is home to 2.3 million Palestinians, would spread to the West Bank and Jerusalem. Gazans have lived under an Israeli blockade for 16 years.
Bodies of Israeli civilians were strewn across the streets of Sderot in southern Israel, near Gaza, surrounded by broken glass. The bodies of a man and woman were sprawled across the front seats of a car.
