Israel pounds Gaza with fiercest air strikes ever, says border secured.

Despite a Hamas warning to kill a hostage for every home struck, Israel declared on Tuesday that it had retaken control of the Gaza border after bombarding the territory with the strongest air assaults in the 75-year history of its confrontation with the Palestinians.

Israel has threatened to exact “mighty revenge” after gunmen rampaged through its cities, leaving the bloodiest attack behind them and the streets littered with victims. It has mobilized tens of thousands of reservists and severely sieged the 2.3 million-person-strong Gaza Strip.

According to Israeli media, the death toll from Hamas strikes has reached 900, dwarfing all other Islamist attacks before 9/11. Most of those killed were civilians shot dead in their homes, in the streets, or at a dance party. Numerous Israelis were abducted as captives, and some were even paraded around the streets of Gaza.

According to officials in Gaza, over 700 people have died in Israeli airstrikes since then, and whole neighborhoods have been destroyed.

According to the UN, 180,000 people in Gaza were left homeless, and many huddled on the streets or in schools. As smoke and flames rose into the early morning sky, rescue responders frequently had trouble getting to the scene of strikes due to road shelling.

Bodies were placed on stretchers and laid out on the ground at the mortuary of the Khan Younis hospital in Gaza. There was no more room for the dead, so medics asked the family to hurry to pick up the remains.

A former municipal building utilized as an emergency refuge for displaced people was attacked and suffered significant casualties.

Ala Abu Tair, 35, who had fled from Abassan Al-Kabira close to the border with his family, found refuge there. “There are an extraordinary number of martyrs, people are still under the rubble, some friends are either martyrs or wounded,” he added. “No place is safe in Gaza, as you see they hit everywhere.”

NO PLACE TO HIDE

While outside reporting, three Gaza journalists were murdered when an Israeli rocket struck a structure. Since Saturday, six journalists have died in Gaza, bringing the total to six.

The Israeli military once suggested that citizens in Gaza move to Egypt, only to quickly clarify that the border was blocked and there was no way out.

Military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said there was “nowhere to hide in Gaza” for Hamas agents. “We will reach them everywhere.”

There has still not been a full official tally of all those killed and missing in Saturday’s strikes in Israel. Volunteers wearing yellow vests and face masks gravely carried the deceased out of homes on stretchers in the southern village of Be’eri, where more than 100 bodies had been recovered.

A house’s floor was covered in a long, wide path of blood where victims had been carried out onto the street from a blood-soaked kitchen where furniture had been flipped over.

Elad Hakim, a survivor of a music event where Hamas had massacred 260 revelers at dawn, remarked, “The thing I want to wake up from this nightmare is…” Everything was so amazing, the best party I’ve been to, until it went from paradise to hell in one second.”

COMMON OFFENSIVE?
The Gaza Strip, which Israel abandoned in 2005 and has been under embargo since Hamas seized power there in 2007, may be the target of its upcoming ground operation. It announced a total siege on Monday, preventing food and gasoline from getting to the strip.

Israel required more than two days to eventually close off the multi-billion-dollar, high-tech barrier wall that was supposed to be indestructible since the attack on Saturday utterly caught them by surprise.

Early on Tuesday, military spokesman Hagari stated there had been no additional infiltrations from Gaza since the day before.

Israeli officials must now choose whether to restrain their reprisals to protect the captives. On Monday, the spokesperson for Hamas, Abu Ubaida, threatened to broadcast the execution of one Israeli hostage for each unannounced Israeli attack on a civilian home.

At a critical time when Israel was close to agreeing to normalize relations with the wealthiest Arab nation, Saudi Arabia, the assaults on Saturday and Israel’s response upended diplomatic arrangements in the Middle East.

Western nations have warmly supported Israel. There have been protests in the streets of Arab cities in favor of the Palestinians. Iran, which supports Hamas, cheered the assaults but denied direct involvement with them.

On Tuesday, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei declared that Iran had kissed the hands of the attack’s architects but that anyone who thought Iran was responsible for them was incorrect. He said that Israel had suffered an irreparable military and intelligence setback due to the strikes.

The Hezbollah organization in Lebanon, Iran’s other major ally in the region, was dragged into the fighting during a fatal skirmish on Israel’s northern border on Monday, raising concerns about opening a second front in the conflict. It claimed that no assault on Israel had its approval.

The top general of the United States cautioned Iran to stay out of the conflict: “We want to convey a very strong message. General Charles Q. Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters accompanying him to Brussels that the aim was to send Iran a clear message that we did not want things to escalate.