Sharp threats. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late Wednesday that his country had "gone on the offensive," warning that "every member of Hamas is a dead man."
"Hamas is Daesh and we are going to crush and destroy them as the world destroyed Daesh," he added in a first joint solemn address with members of his war cabinet formed earlier in the day.
Binyamin Netanyahu and his opposition rival, Benny Gantz, had announced that they had agreed to create an emergency government and a war cabinet for the duration of the conflict, four days after the bloody and unprecedented attack launched by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas against Israel.
'Erase Hamas from the Earth'
In his statement, the Israeli prime minister for the first time made clear Israel's intention to "destroy" Hamas. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant went further, saying, "We are going to wipe Hamas off the Earth."
Binyamin Netanyahu, his eyes misty, also described the massacres committed by Palestinian fighters in Israel.
"We have seen little children tied up and shot in the head, people burned alive, young girls raped and massacred, soldiers beheaded... In one place, they put people together, brought tires and gasoline and burned them alive," he said.
Thousands dead
For the fifth day in a row, Israel carried out destructive air raids in the Gaza Strip. Fighters from Hamas, the Islamist movement that has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007, fired rockets mainly at southern Israel.
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The war was sparked on October 7 by a surprise offensive of unprecedented magnitude launched from Gaza by land and air by Hamas against Israel in the middle of Shabbat, the Jewish weekly day of rest.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the attack, the deadliest since the establishment of the state of Israel 75 years ago, "savagery not seen since the Holocaust." The army reported 1,200 deaths in Israel, most of them civilians. Israeli retaliation has killed 1,055 people in Gaza, many of them civilians, according to local authorities.