GAZA: Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar said on Monday the Palestinian group was prepared for a long war of attrition against the Zionist entity, in a message congratulating Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. "We have prepared ourselves to fight a long battle of attrition,” the Hamas leader said, asserting that Iran-aligned groups in Gaza, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen would "break the will of (the Zionist entity)” after the Houthis hit the Zionist entity in a missile attack on Sunday.
Gaza medics and rescuers on Monday said Zionist strikes on several homes killed at least 18 people, as Hamas claimed it had ample resources to sustain its fight nearly a year into the war. The latest strikes came as Zionist Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned that prospects for a halt in fighting with Hezbollah militants along the Lebanon border were dimming, yet again raising fears of a wider regional conflagration.
Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan told AFP during an interview in Istanbul on Sunday: "The resistance has a high ability to continue. There were martyrs and there were sacrifices... but in return there was an accumulation of experiences and the recruitment of new generations into the resistance.”
His comments came less than a week after Gallant told journalists that Hamas "no longer exists” as a military formation in Gaza.
Deadly fighting raged on in the Gaza Strip on Monday, with survivors seen searching through the debris of crushed buildings following a strike on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. Ten people were killed and 15 others were wounded when an air strike hit the home of the Al-Qassas family in Nuseirat on Monday morning, a medic at Al-Awda hospital, where the bodies were brought, told AFP. "My house was hit while we were sleeping without any prior warning. There are many martyrs, among them the sons of my family and my little grandsons,” said Rashed Al-Qassas, a surviving family member.
Gaza’s civil defense agency said six Palestinians were killed in a similar air strike during the night on a house belonging to the Bassal family in Gaza City’s Zeitun neighborhood, a regular target of Zionist military raids since the war began. Two people were killed in another overnight air strike in Rafah that targeted a house belonging to the Abu Shaar family, the agency said.
The Zionist military offensive has so far killed at least 41,226 people in Gaza, mostly women and children. The war has also drawn in Iran-backed fighters from across the region, including in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq. Tensions have surged along the Zionist entity’s northern border with Lebanon, amid fears the violence could explode into an all-out war.
"The possibility for an agreed framework in the northern arena is running out as Hezbollah continues to ‘tie itself’ to Hamas,” Gallant told US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in a phone call. Zionist media outlets said Amos Hochstein, the special envoy of US President Joe Biden, arrived in the Zionist entity on Monday to help defuse tensions between the Zionist entity and Hezbollah.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group has traded near-daily cross-border fire with Zionist forces since Oct 7. Hezbollah deputy chief Naim Qassem said Saturday his group has "no intention of going to war”, but if the Zionist entity does "unleash” one "there will be large losses on both sides”.
The Houthis said they had "penetrated” Zionist air defenses with their missile attack, while the Zionist entity said the missile likely fragmented mid-air but was not destroyed. In July, a Houthi drone strike killed a civilian in Tel Aviv, at least 1,800 km from Yemen. It prompted retaliatory strikes that caused significant damage and deaths at Yemen’s rebel-controlled Hodeida port.
Since November the Houthis have targeted the Zionist entity and its perceived interests in stated solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, launching dozens of missile and drone strikes that have disrupted global shipping through vital waterways off Yemen. In a televised speech, the Houthis’ leader said the rebels and their regional allies were "preparing to do even more”. "Our operations will continue as long as the aggression and siege on Gaza continue,” Abdul Malik Al-Houthi said. – AFP