Gaza under total siege, water cut off

JERUSALEM—Israel imposed a total siege on the Gaza Strip Monday and cut off the water supply as it kept bombing targets in the Palestinian enclave in response to the Hamas surprise assault it has likened to the 9/11 attacks.

Reeling from the Islamist group’s unprecedented ground, air and sea attacks, Israel has counted over 700 dead and launched a withering barrage of strikes on Gaza that have killed 560 people there.

The skies over Gaza were blackened by plumes of smoke from deafening explosions as Hamas kept launching rockets as far as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, where missile defense systems fired and air raid sirens blared.

Hamas — whose militants surged into Israeli towns on Saturday, sprayed gunfire at civilians and dragged off about 100 hostages — claimed on Monday that Israeli air strikes had killed four of the captives.

Israel said it had called up 300,000 army reservists, and truck convoys were seen moving tanks to the south, where its forces had dislodged the last holdout Hamas fighters from embattled towns.

“We are in control of the communities,” said military spokesman Daniel Hagari, cautioning that some “terrorists” may remain after about 1,000 militants swarmed into the region on the Jewish Sabbath.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel would impose a “complete siege” on the long blockaded enclave and stressed what this meant for its 2.3 million people: “No electricity, no food, no water, no gas — it’s all closed.”

Palestinians in the impoverished coastal territory braced for what many feared will be a massive Israeli ground attack aiming to defeat Hamas and liberate the hostages.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned Gaza civilians to get away from all Hamas sites, which he vowed to turn “to rubble”.

Middle East tensions have spiked as Israel’s arch enemy Iran and their Lebanese ally Hezbollah have praised the Hamas attack, although Tehran rejected any role in the military operation.

Hamas has called on “resistance fighters” in the occupied West Bank and in Arab and Islamic nations to join its “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood”, launched half a century after the 1973 Arab-Israel war.

The United States has pledged “rock solid” support for