Israel’s military said Monday morning that it struck hundreds of Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip overnight as four combat divisions were deployed to the country’s south, where battles with Hamas militants continued. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said “fighter jets and helicopters, aircraft, and artillery struck over 500 Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist targets in the Gaza Strip” Sunday night and Monday morning, claiming to have destroyed tunnels and at least seven “Hamas command centres” in the blockaded Palestinian territory.

The IDF said it also struck a command center used by Islamic Jihad, another Iran-backed terror group based in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
“It’s taking more time than we expected to get things back into a defensive security posture,” Israeli military spokesperson Lt. Col. Richard Hecht told journalists Monday morning, acknowledging the ongoing battles in southern Israel three days after Hamas launched its unprecedented attack on the Jewish state.

The death toll mounts in Israel and Gaza.
Officials said the Israeli death toll from Hamas’ surprise attack stood at 700 Monday morning, but it was expected to continue to rise. More than 250 of the dead were people who had been attending a music festival near the border with Gaza when the attack took place. At least four U.S. nationals were among the dead, and an undetermined number remained missing.
Israel has made it clear that it wants vengeance, and in the Gaza Strip, retribution was falling from the sky. The airstrikes had killed more than 430 people as of Monday morning, including 91 children, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.

In the coming days, Israel is expected to launch a ground incursion into Gaza, a densely packed region sandwiched between the Mediterranean Sea to the west and Israel to the north and east.

Israel has been locked in a cycle of violence with Palestinian militant groups for decades, but what happened on Saturday was unprecedented. Hundreds of Hamas militants broke through the steel and concrete barrier that Israel has used for decades to contain Palestinians inside Gaza.
They stormed into Israel by land, sea, and even on paragliders as waves of rockets—more than 3,000 of them—were unleashed on Israeli towns and cities.

The gunmen from the group, which has long been designated a terrorist organisation by the U.S. and Israel, went on a rampage, slaughtering civilians in the streets, engaging Israeli security forces with deadly effect, and kidnapping hostages, including women, children, and the elderly.

Some of them were paraded through the streets of Gaza—human trophies that Hamas knows it can use as leverage against its enemy.
One of the captives is Noa Argamani, a university student who was hauled away on the back of a motorcycle as she screamed for help.

“She is an amazing person, a sweet child,” her father, Yaacov, told CBS News. “I cannot believe it.”
The shocked father said he wanted the Israeli government to rescue his daughter, but “only by peaceful measures.”