TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israeli soldiers fought to repel Hamas militants Sunday and exchanged fire with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, raising the prospect of a broader regional conflagration a day after an unprecedented surprise attack on so
uthern Israel by Palestinian militants that killed at least 250 and left Israelis stunned and reeling.
In an assault of startling breadth, Hamas gunmen rolled into as many as 22 locations outside the Gaza Strip early Saturday morning, including towns and other communities as far as 15 miles from the Gaza border, while Hamas launched thousands of rockets at Israeli cities. They killed at least 250 people, including 26 soldiers, and took hostages as Israel’s military scrambled to muster a response.
Israeli media, citing rescue service officials, said at least 250 people were killed and 1,500 wounded in Saturday's attack, making it the deadliest in Israel in decades. Hamas fighters took an unknown number of civilians and soldiers captive into Gaza.Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets and shells on Sunday at three Israeli positions in a disputed area along the country’s border with Syria’s Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
“Get out of there now,” he told Gaza residents, who have no way to leave the tiny, overcrowded Mediterranean territory. The strength, sophistication and timing of the Saturday morning attack shocked Israelis. Hamas fighters used explosives to break through the border fence enclosing Gaza, then crossed with motorcycles, pickup trucks, paragliders and speed boats on the coast.
After one Israeli strike, a Hamas rocket barrage hit four cities, including Tel Aviv and a nearby suburb. Throughout the day, Hamas fired more than 3,500 rockets, the Israeli military said. The Hamas incursion on Simchat Torah, a normally joyous day when Jews complete the annual cycle of reading the Torah scroll, revived painful memories of the 1973 Mideast war practically 50 years to the day, in which Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, aiming to take back Israeli-occupied territories.
Associated Press photos showed an elderly Israeli woman being brought into Gaza on a golf cart by Hamas gunmen and another woman squeezed between two fighters on a motorcycle. AP journalists saw four people taken from the kibbutz of Kfar Azza, including two women. Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin has put the country’s air force on standby to evacuate its citizens if needed. The Philippine government said it was still working to verify the reports.
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