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Israel has retaken control of all towns along the southern Gaza border, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Monday, as fighting continues two days after Hamas militants launched a surprise attack which left hundreds of civilians dead and provoked a major military backlash against Gaza.
An IDF spokesperson said in a televised briefing that some isolated clashes against Palestinian gunmen were still ongoing on Monday. He also confirmed media reports that the death toll in Israel had reached at least 700 people, while the Palestinian health ministry said 493 people had died and 2,751 had been wounded in retaliatory airstrikes on the Gaza Strip.
IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said in a Twitter video that the attack this weekend was “by far the worst day in Israeli history.” “If you are Americans and want to compare this to something in American history, then this could be a 9/11 and a Pearl Harbor wrapped into one,” he said. Deborah Lipstads, the U.S. special antisemitism envoy, separately described Saturday as “the most lethal assault against Jews since the Holocaust.” The Jewish Telegraphic Agency said the claim that this was the most deadly day of attacks on the Jewish community since the end of World War Two “appears to be accurate.” They reported that no other conflict in Israeli history had seen “this many civilians murdered in a single day.”