Israel announced Monday it would impose a "complete siege" on the Gaza Strip amid fighting and a growing death toll in the clash with Palestinian resistance groups.
The Israeli army fought sporadic clashes with Hamas members while pounding the Gaza Strip from the air as it gathered troops and hardware for a likely ground operation.
More than two days after Hamas' surprise attack from Gaza, the military claimed the fighting had largely died down for now. The attack caught Israel's vaunted military and intelligence apparatus completely off guard, bringing heavy battles to its streets for the first time in decades.
Israel formally declared war on Sunday, portending greater fighting ahead, and a possible ground assault into Gaza – a move that in the past has brought intensified casualties. Palestinian resistance groups continued firing barrages of rockets, setting off air raid sirens in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Civilians are already paying a high price. Around 900 people have been killed in Israel while over 500 have been killed in Gaza, a tiny, impoverished enclave of 2.3 million Palestinians bordering Israel and Egypt.
Palestinian groups, in the meanwhile, claimed to be holding over 130 captives from the Israeli side.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered the "complete siege" on Gaza, saying authorities would cut electricity and block the entry of food and fuel. Israel and Egypt have imposed various levels of blockade on Gaza since Hamas took power in 2007.
"I have ordered a complete siege of the Gaza Strip," Gallant said following an army's assessment session, according to the Times of Israel news website.
"There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed (to Gaza)," Gallant added.
Energy Minister Israel Katz ordered water supplies to Gaza to also be cut. Groundwater in Gaza is severely salinated.
More than 2 million people live in poor conditions in Gaza, which stretches for about 40 kilometers along the Mediterranean Sea.
Humanitarian aid supplies are being prepared from Egypt, with hospitals and ambulances on standby, said a Palestinian spokesman at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and southern Gaza.
Security sources told dpa that no Palestinian wounded had arrived in Egypt so far due to "difficulties in the face of Israeli shelling."
The chief military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, told reporters Israel has "control" of its border communities. He claimed there had been some isolated incidents early Monday, but that "at this stage, there is no fighting in the communities."
Israeli tanks and drones, meanwhile, guarded openings in the border fence, Hagari said, adding that 15 of 24 border communities have been evacuated, with the rest expected to be evacuated over the next 24 hours.
Earlier, Hamas spokesman Abdel-Latif al-Qanoua said that the group's members continued to battle outside Gaza and had captured more Israelis as recently as Monday morning.
He said the group aims to free all Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, which in the past has agreed to painful, lopsided exchange deals in which it released large numbers of prisoners for individual captives or even the remains of soldiers.
Israel, in the meanwhile, hit more than 1,000 targets in Gaza, its military said, including airstrikes that leveled much of the town of Beit Hanoun in the enclave’s northeast corner. Hagari said Hamas was using the town as a staging ground for attacks. There was no immediate word on casualties, and most of the community’s population of tens of thousands likely fled beforehand.
Hagari said the army had called up around 300,000 reservists – a massive mobilization – and that Israel would aim to end Hamas' rule of Gaza.
Gazans feared further escalation. As of late Sunday, Israeli airstrikes had destroyed 159 housing units across the territory and severely damaged 1,210 others, the U.N. said. The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said a school sheltering more than 225 people took a direct hit. It did not say where the fire came from.
In the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, an Israeli airstrike early Monday killed 19 people, including women and children, said Talat Barhoum, a doctor at the local Al-Najjar Hospital. Barhoum said aircraft hit the home of the Abu Hilal family, and that one of those killed was Rafaat Abu Hilal, a leader of a local resistance group. The strike caused damage to surrounding homes.
Over the weekend, another airstrike on a home in Rafah killed 19 members of the Abu Quta family, including women and children, survivors said.
Elsewhere, six Palestinians were killed in clashes with Israeli soldiers Sunday around the West Bank.
