Israeli soldiers look at the remains of a police station which was the site of a battle following a mass infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip, in Sderot, southern Israel, Oct. 8, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

Israel pounded the Gaza Strip on Tuesday with fierce air strikes despite a threat from Hamas terrorists to execute a captive for each home hit.

Across the barrier wall surrounding the strip, Israeli soldiers were collecting the last of the dead four days after Hamas gunmen rampaged through towns in by far the deadliest attack in Israel‘s history.

Israel has vowed to take “mighty revenge,” calling up hundreds of thousands of reservists and placing Gaza, the crowded home to 2.3 million people, under siege.

Israel‘s embassy in Washington said the death toll from Hamas’ weekend attacks had surpassed 1,000, dwarfing all modern Islamist attacks on the West except for 9/11.

The victims were overwhelmingly civilians, gunned down in homes, on streets, or at a dance party. Scores of Israelis and some foreigners were captured and taken to Gaza as hostages, some paraded through the streets.

Gaza’s health ministry said Israel‘s subsequent air strikes had killed hundreds. The strikes intensified on Tuesday night, shaking the ground and pouring columns of smoke and flames into the morning sky.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, who denounced the Hamas attacks, said civilians had been harmed in Israeli strikes.

“International humanitarian law is clear: the obligation to take constant care to spare the civilian population and civilian objects remains applicable throughout the attacks,” he said.

TRAIL OF BLOOD

In Israel, there has still been no complete official count of the dead and missing from Saturday’s attacks. In the southern town of Be’eri, where more than 100 bodies have been retrieved, volunteers in yellow vests and face masks solemnly carried the dead out of homes on stretchers.

A long, wide trail of blood wound along the floor of a house where bodies had been dragged out to the street from a blood-soaked kitchen strewn with overturned furniture.

“The thing I want the most is to wake up from this nightmare,” said Elad Hakim, a survivor from a music festival where Hamas had killed 260 partygoers at dawn.

Amid the burned out houses of the Kfar Aza kibbutz, bodies of Israeli residents and Hamas terrorists lay on the ground beside strewn furniture and torched cars. Israeli soldiers went from house to house to take away the dead. The stench of corpses was heavy in the air.

“You see the babies, the mothers, the fathers, in their bedrooms, in their protection rooms and how the terrorist kills them. It’s not a war, it’s not a battlefield. It’s a massacre,” said Israeli Major General Itai Veruv, escorting journalists at the scene.

“It’s something that we used to imagine from our grandfathers, grandmothers in the pogrom in Europe and other places.”

Soldiers were still securing the paths of the kibbutz as bursts of gunfire and explosions could be heard in the distance. Jets could be heard above and smoke could be seen rising from Gaza. Sirens warned of incoming rockets intercepted overhead.

Israel‘s next move could be a ground offensive into the Gaza Strip, territory it abandoned in 2005 and has kept under blockade since Hamas, a Palestinian Islamist terror group, took power there in 2007. The siege it announced on Monday would keep out even food and fuel.

Israel also struck the border gate inside the sole crossing from Gaza into Egypt. Hours earlier it had advised Gazans to flee to Egypt, only to issue a swift clarification to say the crossing was closed.

Hamas operatives had “nowhere to hide in Gaza,” Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said.

Israel was caught so completely off guard by Saturday’s attack that it took more than two days to finally seal off the multi-billion dollar high-tech barrier wall, meant to have been impenetrable.

Israeli leaders now have to decide whether to constrain their retaliation to safeguard the hostages. Hamas spokesperson Abu Ubaida issued the threat on Monday to kill one Israeli captive for every Israeli bombing of a civilian house without warning — and to broadcast the killing.

The new war risks upending the plans of diplomats at a crucial juncture, when Israel was on the verge of an agreement to normalize relations with the richest Arab power, Saudi Arabia.

Western countries have strongly backed Israel. Arab cities have seen demonstrations in support of the Palestinians. Iran, Hamas’s patron, celebrated the attacks but denied a direct role.

“We kiss the hands of those who planned the attack on the Zionist regime,” Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, said in a televised speech wearing a Palestinian scarf, though he said accusations Tehran was behind it were false.