The Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip announced this morning that 2,329 Palestinians were killed and more than 9,000 wounded in Israeli air strikes in response to Hamas attacks on Israel on Saturday, October 7.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they “killed about 1,500 Palestinian extremists who infiltrated southern Israel after breaking through the border fence and more than 1,300 other people, mostly civilians.”
They also said they captured and took to the Gaza Strip about 150 soldiers and civilians, including women, children and the elderly, according to Israeli media.
In Israel, more than 3,300 people were wounded in the initial attacks by Hamas and the continued rocket fire from Gaza.
The Israeli army claims to have killed another Hamas commander
The Israeli army announced this morning that it had killed another commander of the Hamas commando forces, who led attacks on the southern Israeli settlements of Nirim and Nir Oz last weekend.
Bilal al-Kedra, the commander of the Nukhba unit of the southern Khan Yunis battalion, was killed in an airstrike thanks to intelligence efforts by Israel’s Shin Bet security service and military intelligence, Israeli media reported.
A new call for the evacuation of Gaza residents
Israeli army spokesman Yonatan Konrikus has again called on residents of the northern part of the Gaza Strip to heed the warning to evacuate to the southern part of the Palestinian territory, at a time when, he said, Israel is ready to start “significant military operations”.
“It’s important to focus on the fact that we’re going to start significant military operations when we see that civilians have left the area,” Lt. Col. Conricus told CNN, adding, “It’s really important that the people of Gaza know that we’ve been very, very, generous this time. We gave enough warning, more than 25 hours”.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians are being evacuated from about half of the densely populated Gaza Strip, but many remain, mostly in hospital shelters in the north.
Meanwhile, they face shortages of food, water and medicine.
