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Acting Speaker Patrick McHenry (R-NC) said the U.S. will act to support the government of Israel in whatever way it needs in the aftermath of terrorist attacks in the country: “If we need to act as a government, we will,” Politico reports.
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Israel said on Tuesday that its military had regained control over towns near Gaza, four days after Palestinian gunmen launched a devastating cross-border assault, as the country girded for the next phase of what Israeli officials have warned will be a crushing campaign against Hamas militants.
As night fell in Israel, rocket-warning sirens blared in the town of Ashkelon, a coastal city located just north of the Gaza border. Earlier, rockets fired from Gaza targeted Tel Aviv and nearby Ben-Gurion International Airport “in response to the targeting of civilians” by Israel, Hamas said on the Telegram social media platform. There were no immediate reports of damage.
Israel’s government approved the call-up of an additional 60,000 reservists, raising the total number mobilized over the last three days to 360,000, the most in such a short period since the country’s founding. The call-ups have touched nearly every corner of the country of 10 million, already awash in grief and anger over the deaths of more than 900 people in the attacks that began on Saturday.
With the border nearly secured, the scale of the horror unleashed on towns and villages near Gaza was slowly coming into grim focus: In one kibbutz a mile and a half from Gaza, New York Times journalists saw Israeli soldiers carrying slain residents on stretchers, and more than a dozen bloated bodies lying on the ground.
It is not yet clear if or when Israel will order a ground invasion of Gaza, an impoverished coastal enclave ruled by Hamas. But the Israeli military said on Tuesday that its airstrikes against the coastal strip would be “bigger than before and more severe” because of the scale of the Palestinian incursion. The Israeli military said it had recovered the bodies of around 1,500 Palestinian assailants since Saturday morning, offering one of the first clear indications of the size of the assault.
Hamas confirmed that two of its senior officials have been killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza. The strikes continued a day after the militant group, which is believed to have taken around 150 Israeli hostages since Saturday, threatened to kill a captive each time Israel strikes Gaza without warning. Health officials in Gaza said on Tuesday that 830 Palestinians have been killed and 4,250 others have been wounded in the last four days, though it was unclear how many were civilians.
Here’s what else to know:
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President Biden is scheduled to deliver remarks on the attacks in Israel on Tuesday at 1 p.m. Eastern time, according to White House officials. The White House released a joint statement on Monday from President Biden and other world leaders expressing “steadfast and united support” for Israel and the “unequivocal condemnation” of Hamas.
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At least 11 U.S. citizens have been killed in the fighting, President Biden said, and more are still unaccounted for.
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The United Nations’ top human rights official condemned the “horrifying mass killings” and executions allegedly committed by Palestinian armed groups. At the same time, he warned that Israel’s announcement of a “complete siege” of Gaza would exacerbate the “already dire” humanitarian conditions there.
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At least one senior officer in the Israel Defense Forces was killed in a skirmish on the Lebanon border on Monday, according to a military spokesman. At least 120 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the conflict.
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Israel has asked the United States for more weapons, including precision-guided munitions for combat aircraft and interceptors for its Iron Dome missile defense system. Hamas has fired thousands of rockets at Israel since Saturday, putting a strain on Israel’s defenses. Israel has struck more than a thousand targets in Gaza in retaliation.