Key PointsOfficials in Gaza said more than 100 people had been killed in a recent string of Israeli airstrikes.While visiting Israeli troops in Gaza, Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue the war until “we finish it”.There have been growing international calls for a ceasefire amid a worsening humanitarian crisis.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to continue the fight against Hamas militants while Palestinians have mourned more than 100 people who Gaza health officials say were killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Netanyahu visited Israeli troops in the northern Gaza Strip just hours after one of the besieged enclave’s deadliest nights in the 11-week-old battle between Israel and Hamas.
Retaliating against Hamas for its deadly 7 October cross-border rampage, Israel has
, to shift operations in Gaza to a lower-intensity phase and reduce civilian deaths.
But Netanyahu told parliamentarians from his Likud party that the war was far from over and dismissed what he cast as media speculation his government might call a halt to the fighting.
He said Israel would not succeed in freeing its remaining hostages without applying military pressure.
“We are not stopping. The war will continue until the end, until we finish it, no less,” Netanyahu, who has defied international calls for a ceasefire, said during the Gaza visit.
The Israeli Prime Minister has newly rejected growing international calls for a ceasefire. Source: Getty / Ronen Zvulun/AFP
At a funeral in Gaza, a line of Palestinian mourners touched the white shrouds wrapped around the bodies of at least 70 people who Palestinian health officials said were killed by an airstrike that hit Maghazi in the centre of the strip.
The strikes that began hours before midnight persisted into Monday.
Palestinian media said Israel had stepped up its air and ground shelling in central Gaza.
Eight others were killed as Israeli planes and tanks struck houses and roads in nearby al-Bureij and al-Nusseirat, health officials said.
Medics said an Israeli air strike in Khan Younis in southern Gaza killed 23, bringing total Palestinian fatalities overnight to more than 100.
Pope Francis said in a Christmas message that children dying in wars, including in Gaza, are the “little Jesuses of today” and that Israeli strikes were reaping an “appalling harvest” of innocent civilians.
The Israeli army said it was reviewing the report of a Maghazi incident and was committed to minimising harm to civilians.
Israel says Hamas operates in densely populated areas and uses civilians as human shields, which Hamas denies.
Palestinians mourning at a funeral held at the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital for those killed in an Israeli airstrike in Maghazi that Gaza officials say killed 70 people. Source: Getty / Anadolu
Christian clergy cancelled celebrations in Bethlehem, the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank city where Christian tradition says Jesus was born in a stable 2000 years ago.
Palestinian Christians held a candle-lit Christmas vigil in Bethlehem with hymns and prayers for peace in Gaza.
There was no large tree, the usual centrepiece of Bethlehem’s Christmas observances.
Nativity figurines in churches were placed among rubble and barbed wire in solidarity with the people of Gaza.
In Gaza, Hamas and smaller militant ally Islamic Jihad, both sworn to Israel’s destruction, are believed to be holding more than 100 hostages from among 240 they captured during their 7 October rampage through Israeli towns, when they killed 1200 people.
Since then, Israel has laid much of the narrow strip to waste.
Nearly 20,700 Gazans have been killed, according to authorities in Hamas-ruled Gaza.
The vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million population have been driven from their homes and the
.
The Israeli military said on Monday two of its soldiers had died in the last day, bringing to 158 the number killed since ground operations began on 20 October.
The war between Hamas and Israel is the latest escalation in a long-standing conflict.
Hamas is a Palestinian political and military group, which has governed the Gaza Strip since the most recent elections in 2006.
Hamas’ stated aim is to establish a Palestinian state and stop the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, illegal under international law.
Hamas in its entirety is listed as a terrorist organisation by the European Union and seven other countries, including Australia. But the UN Assembly rejected classifying Hamas as a terrorist group in a 2018 vote.
In 2021 the International Criminal Court opened an investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes in the Palestinian territories dating back to 2014, including the recent attacks of both Israel and Hamas.
Israeli airstrike kills senior Iranian general in Syria
An Israeli airstrike outside the Syrian capital Damascus killed a senior adviser in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, three security sources and Iran’s state media say.
The sources told Reuters that the adviser, known as Sayyed Razi Mousavi, was responsible for coordinating the military alliance between Syria and Iran.
Iran’s ambassador in Damascus Hossein Akbari told Iranian state TV that Mousavi was posted at the embassy as a diplomat and was killed by Israeli missiles after returning home from work.
“This act is a sign of the Zionist regime’s frustration and weakness in the region for which it will certainly pay the price,” Iranian media cited Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi as saying.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani told state media that Iran “reserves the right to take necessary measure to respond to this action at the appropriate time and place”.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad group condemned the killing of Mousavi, saying he had played a vital role in supporting the resistance in the region as well as the Palestinian people and their cause.
There was no immediate comment from Israel’s military.
– With reporting by Reuters
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