The fighting continued on Sunday, with Israel carrying out its single deadliest airstrike on Gaza in the week-long bombing campaign, and the number of rockets fired at Israel from Gaza surpassing 3,000.
According to Palestinian medics, Israeli airstrikes killed at least 42 civilians on Sunday. Despite the high death toll and international attempts to negotiate a truce, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicated that the fourth war with Gaza's rulers, Hamas, will continue.
The Israeli military confirmed that civilians were killed in the strike.
According to an Israeli Defense Forces spokesperson, an Israeli aircraft "struck underground military infrastructure belonging to the Hamas terror group, which was located under the road in the relevant region." “The foundations of the residential house above the underground military base collapsed as well, resulting in unintended casualties. The IDF attack was aimed at military infrastructure.”
The Israeli military said it bombed the house of Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that runs Gaza, in the southern town of Khan Younis, in a separate attack. A video of the bombing was posted.
According to Palestinian officials, Israeli planes, drones, and artillery have killed at least 192 people, the majority of whom are civilians, including 58 children, since the campaign began on Monday.
Israel claims to have killed 75 Palestinian militants, the majority of whom were Hamas members and accuses the group of using civilians as human shields. Israel has often identified the targets of airstrikes that resulted in civilian casualties as arms caches or militant operations centers.
According to Israeli officials, Hamas rockets killed 12 people in Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top officials said at a press conference following a meeting of the Security Cabinet that Israeli forces had reached over 1,500 targets, causing significant damage to Hamas infrastructure, including the network of tunnels it uses to move people and arms.
He said, "Hamas' underground has gone down the drain." “The metro has morphed from a strategic weapon to a terrorist death trap.”
Israeli troops, he said, are “doing all we can to mitigate any damage to civilians as much as possible.”
The Israeli Defense Forces said on Sunday that 3,100 rockets had been launched from Gaza since May 10, with more than 400 of them misfiring and landing in Gaza. That's more rockets fired at Israel in a single week than in any previous war, and some of them have a greater range than Hamas' arsenal has previously shown. Officials in Israel have confessed to being taken aback by the barrage's breadth and severity. Last week, Hamas reported that some of its rockets had a range of 155 miles, which would enable them to hit any point in Israel. Hamas has received assistance from Iran in developing increasingly sophisticated rockets.
According to military officials, Israel has intercepted about 1,100 missiles.
The Israeli military also announced on Sunday that it had sunk several Hamas underwater drones, or unmanned submarines, at their Mediterranean base. According to Israeli officials, the drones, which were armed with explosives, were meant to be used against offshore gas drilling rigs.
