Israel forms emergency govt for duration of war against Hamas

As Israel kept bombing Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a political rival announced an emergency government for the duration of the conflict.

The veteran right-wing leader was joined by the centrist Benny Gantz, a former defence minister, in the government and war cabinet as both put aside bitter political divisions that have roiled the country and sparked mass protests.

Their joint announcement came after Israeli soldiers sweeping battle-torn southern towns said they had found 1,200 victims five days after the Islamist militants' onslaught, the worst attack in Israel's 75-year history.

Gaza officials reported more than 1,000 people killed in Israel's withering campaign of air and artillery strikes on the crowded Palestinian enclave, where black smoke billowed into the sky and entire city blocks lay in ruins. 

Israel has massed forces, tanks and other heavy armour around Gaza in its retaliatory operation against what Netanyahu labelled "an attack whose savagery ... we have not seen since the Holocaust".

US President Joe Biden has pledged to send more munitions and military hardware to its close ally Israel and expressed revulsion at the "sheer evil" of the slaughter of civilians in the unprecedented assault Hamas unleashed from Saturday.

Amid the crisis that has been labelled "Israel's 9/11", Netanyahu struck the political deal with Gantz and pledged to freeze for now his government's flashpoint judicial overhaul plan that has sparked an unprecedented wave of mass protests since the start of the year.

Netanyahu's extreme-right and ultra-Orthodox Jewish allies will remain in government, however. Opposition leader Yair Lapid has not joined the temporary alliance, although the joint statement said a seat would be "reserved" for him in the war cabinet.

Fears for hostages 
As the war has raged, fears have been intense in Israel for the fate of at least 150 hostages -- mostly Israelis but also including foreign and dual nationals -- being held in Gaza by Hamas. 

The militant group has claimed that four of the captives died in Israeli strikes and has threatened to kill other hostages if civilian targets are bombed without advance warning from Israel.

Concern has mounted over the worsening humanitarian crisis in war-torn Gaza, where Israel had levelled over 1,000 buildings and imposed a total siege, cutting off water, food and energy supplies for 2.3 million people.

The enclave's sole power plant shut down Wednesday after running out of fuel, Gaza's electricity provider said.

More than 260,000 Gaza residents have been forced from their homes, a UN aid agency said, while the European Union called for a "humanitarian corridor" to allow civilians to flee the enclave's fifth war in 15 years.

Israel appeared to be readying for a possible ground invasion of Gaza, but faces the threat of a multi-front war after also coming under rocket attack from militant groups in neighbouring Lebanon and Syria.

Israel again struck targets Wednesday in southern Lebanon, an area controlled by Hezbollah, an ally of Israel's arch enemy Iran.

Biden, who has diverted an aircraft carrier battle group to the eastern Mediterranean, issued a stern warning to Israel's foes: "To any country, any organisation, anyone thinking of taking advantage of this situation, I have one word: don't."

A first US aircraft has delivered "advanced armaments" to southern Israel's Nevatim Airbase, the Israeli army said, declaring that "our common enemies know that the cooperation between our militaries is stronger than ever".

'Staggering' death toll 
Israel has been badly shaken by the deadliest attack in its 75-year history and the intelligence failure that allowed more than 1,500 militants to storm through the Gaza security barrier in their coordinated land, air and sea attack on the Jewish Sabbath. 

Hamas gunmen swept into small towns and kibbutzim and indiscriminately killed residents who hid in their homes or died defending their communities.

Biden in a solemn White House speech Tuesday expressed his disgust at atrocities including murders of entire families, rapes of women and "stomach-turning reports of babies being killed".

Israeli forces have retaken more than a dozen southern towns near Gaza after days of gruelling street battles that have left the bodies of at least 1,500 Hamas militants strewn in the streets.

"We are discovering bodies of dead Israelis in the various communities that Hamas infiltrated and where they conducted their massacres," said army spokesman Jonathan Conricus.

"The death toll is a staggering 1,200 dead Israelis ... the overwhelming majority of them" civilians, he said, with the army later also reporting 169 fallen Israeli soldiers.

Troops have encountered and killed several holdout Hamas militants, said Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari, who told reporters Wednesday that "over the past day, we've killed 18 terrorists".

The Israeli army has called up 300,000 reservists for what Netanyahu has said will be a "long and difficult" war.

"The war is progressing well," said Weizman Nissan, 72, a resident of Sderot near Gaza and a veteran of three of Israel's wars.

"The army is doing what it needs to do. It's not killing children or women and is not slaughtering babies. It's a moral army. 

"Hamas is not an army, they're terrorists .. You need to strike back the same way, but of course not kill children or the uninvolved."

'In a ghost town' 
Heavy bombardment again rained down on Gaza, where the sky was blackened and Hamas said at least 30 people were killed in overnight strikes.

Rubble, burnt out cars and broken glass covered roads in Gaza City, where bombs struck the Hamas-linked Islamic University. Also targeted were residential buildings, mosques, factories and shops, said Salama Marouf of the Gaza government's media office. 

One Gaza resident, Mazen Mohammad, 38, said his terrified family had spent the night huddled together as explosions shook the area, before emerging in the morning to assess the total devastation of their neighbourhood.

"We felt like we were in a ghost town, as if we were the only survivors," Mohammad told AFP.

Medical supplies, including oxygen, were running low at Gaza's overwhelmed Al-Shifa hospital, said emergency room physician Mohammed Ghonim.

Fear and distrust 
Unrest has flared in the occupied West Bank, where protests have been held in solidarity with Gaza and 27 Palestinians have been killed in clashes since Saturday. 

"My entire life, I have seen Israel kill us, confiscate our lands and arrest our children," said Ramallah coffee vendor Farah al-Saadi, 52, who praised the Hamas assault.

Israeli cities have been eerily quiet and tense, with some residents noting a growing sense of fear and distrust between Jews and members of the Arab-Israeli minority.

"Israeli people are scared of the Arabs and the Arabs are scared of the Jews... everybody is scared of each other," said Ahmed Karkash, a shopkeeper in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Frantic diplomacy has continued as international and regional powers sought to prevent a wider conflagration in the Middle East.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel of "shameful methods" including "bombing civilian sites, killing civilians, blocking humanitarian aid".

EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said Hamas's killings of Israeli civilians was an act of war and reflected an "ancient evil" and declared that "we fully support Israel's right to defend itself".