GAZA: Ground battles raged in Gaza on Sunday, where Israeli troops tightened their Siege of Gaza City resulting in house-to-house combat with Palestinian fighters.
“Soldiers were seen engaged in house-to-house combat as tanks and armoured bulldozers churned through the sand in footage released by the Israel army,” AFP reported.
At least 9,770 Palestinians, including 4,008 children, have been killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza since October 7.
Meanwhile, phone and internet connections were down on Sunday evening for the third time during the Israeli aggression, according to Paltel, the last remaining major operator. Shortly after the blackout, the Israeli army launched an intense bombardment on Gaza City and other nearby zones in the north of the enclave.
The explosions were so powerful they could be heard in Rafah in the far south of the Palestinian territory, according to an AFP journalist on the scene. Hamas said Israel was carrying out “intense bombings” around several hospitals in northern Gaza.
‘Nuclear Option’
In light of his comment regarding the use of nuclear bomb on Gaza, Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu was subsequently suspended from government meetings “until further notice”, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said.
Eliyahu, an ultranationalist politician part of Netnayahu’s ruling coalition, told Israel’s Kol Barama radio he was not entirely satisfied with the scale of Israel’s retaliation in the Palestinian territory after Hamas fighters carried out their deadly attacks inside southern Israel.
When the interviewer asked whether the Israeli minister advocated dropping “some kind of atomic bomb” on the Gaza Strip “to kill everyone”, Eliyahu replied: “That’s one option”.
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office quickly responded in a statement, describing Eliyahu’s remarks as “disconnected from reality” and adding that Israel was trying to spare “non-combatants” in Gaza.
In a follow-up question about the estimated 240 hostages held in Gaza, Eliyahu said that “in war we pay a price”. “Why are the lives of the hostages… more important than the lives of the soldiers?” he said.
The Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum, representing relatives of people snatched to Gaza by Hamas, slammed Eliyahu’s “reckless and cruel” statement.
When the interviewer asked whether the Israeli minister advocated dropping “some kind of atomic bomb” on the Gaza Strip “to kill everyone”, Eliyahu replied: “That’s one option”.
Following the outcry over his remarks, Eliyahu said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that his statement about the atomic bomb was “metaphorical”. He also said that Israel was “committed to doing everything possible to return the hostages safe and sound”.
