Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shared a gruesome photo of a child’s bloodied bed, declaring “Hamas is worse than ISIS” — as the death toll Wednesday topped 1,000 on each side of the Israeli-Gaza border.
The prime minister posted the graphic, blood-strewn image before he and a leading opposition figure agreed to form an emergency unity government.
The war-time Cabinet — which establishes a degree of unity after years of bitterly divisive politics — comes as the Israeli military appeared increasingly likely to launch a fierce ground offensive into Gaza.
The move will likely dramatically hike casualties in a war that has already claimed the lives of 1,200 Israelis and 1,100 Palestinians, according to officials.
Under intense public pressure to topple Hamas, the new unity government will consist of Netanyahu, Benny Gantz — a senior opposition figure and former defense minister — and current Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
The coalition will instil the leadership with greater military experience, which will bolster public trust and boost the government’s legitimacy to make significant wartime moves, such as a ground offensive, political analysts say. Israel has already mobilized some 360,000 reservists.
“Expertise and legitimacy, these are the two assets this government will now have to fight this war,” Professor Gideon Rahat, a political scientist at the Hebrew University and senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute told the Wall Street Journal.
Meanwhile, Israel continued its bombardment of the sealed-off Gaza Strip through Wednesday – with strikes flattening neighborhoods as the region’s only power plant ran out of fuel.
The military said dozens of its fighter jets had struck more than 200 targets in a neighborhood of Gaza City Tuesday night that it insisted had been used by Hamas to launch its attacks.
“We started the offensive from the air, later on we will also come from the ground,” Gallant, the defense minister, told Israeli soldiers near the fence.
Israel-Hamas war: How we got here
2005: Israel unilaterally withdraws from the Gaza Strip more than three decades after winning the territory from Egypt in the Six-Day War.
2006: Terrorist group Hamas wins a Palestinian legislative election.
2007: Hamas seizes control of Gaza in a civil war.
2008: Israel launches military offensive against Gaza after Palestinian terrorists fired rockets into the town of Sderot.
2023: Hamas launches the biggest attack on Israel in 50 years, in an early-morning ambush Oct. 7, firing thousands of rockets and sending dozens of militants into Israeli towns.
Terrorists killed more than 1,200 Israelis, wounded more than 4,200, and took at least 200 hostage.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to announce, “We are at war,” and vowed Hamas would pay “a price it has never known.”
The Gaza Health Ministry — which is controlled by Hamas — reported at least 3,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 12,500 injured since the war began.
The Hamas-run Interior Ministry said Israel’s airstrikes had destroyed the entire al-Karama neighborhood in Gaza City — with a “large number” of people killed or wounded.
About 250,000 had been left homeless amid the destruction, Hamas officials said.
After Gaza’s only power plant ran out of fuel Wednesday afternoon, the region’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa, warned it only had enough fuel to keep electricity running for three days, according to Matthias Kannes, a Gaza-based official for Doctors Without Borders.
Other hospitals’ generators were likely to run out in five days, the Palestinian Red Crescent added.
On the other side, Hamas terrorists in Gaza – who are still holding an estimated 150 men, women and children hostage — continued to fire rockets at Israel Wednesday, including a heavy barrage at the southern town of Ashkelon.
Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system intercepted at least one rocket before it rained down on the town.
Follow along with The Post’s coverage of Israel’s war with Hamas
The children’s wing of the Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon took a direct hit from one of the strikes, though no casualties were reported.
The risk of the war spreading was apparent Wednesday after the Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah fired anti-tank missiles at an Israeli military position and claimed to have killed and wounded troops.
The Israeli military confirmed the attack, though it wouldn’t comment on possible casualties.
After nightfall, Israel urged residents in the north to hunker down after it detected “hostile aircraft” entering from Lebanon. But the Israeli military later said the alert warning of incoming aircraft, well removed from Gaza in the south, may have been a malfunction.
As of Wednesday, Israel’s death toll was at 1,200 with more than 2,700 wounded, its military said. Meanwhile, Israeli reprisal strikes on Gaza had killed 1,100 people and wounded over 5,300, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.
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