Israel battles to drive out Hamas fighters as dozens held hostage
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00:00 Just day three of the war in Gaza after the biggest attack in decades shocked the nation
00:05 to its core.
00:06 The death toll from the violence since Hamas's surprise attack on Saturday morning having
00:10 surpassed more than 1,100.
00:13 The Israeli death toll has now risen to at least 700, including 44 soldiers and 260 mainly
00:20 young people ambushed at a music festival.
00:23 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warning the war will be long and difficult.
00:29 In Gaza, which is currently being pummeled by Israeli airstrikes, Palestinian officials
00:34 have reported at least 490 deaths.
00:38 Now a recap as to where we stand this Monday.
00:41 Israeli military says fighting is ongoing in seven or eight areas, including one active
00:45 hostage situation in Kibbutz Kfar Azza.
00:50 Hamas militants are reportedly still entering Israel or crossing back and forth, with the
00:55 border yet to be secured.
00:57 The fate of an estimated 130 Israeli hostages, some of them dual nationals, are still unknown.
01:05 Media reports now say that Iran helped Hamas plan its surprise attack against Israel.
01:12 Let's cross now to Jerusalem to speak to France 24's Iris Mackler.
01:15 Iris, what do we know about the ongoing fighting between Israeli troops and Hamas militants
01:20 in the south of the country?
01:23 It is ongoing.
01:24 You know, it's now more than 48 hours after the initial attack, and we have learned that
01:29 there have been several more crossings.
01:32 70 Palestinian militants were meant, reported to have entered the south of Israel from Gaza
01:39 overnight.
01:40 Israel says that it has neutralized, in its words, in other words, killed most of them.
01:46 But it does concede that there are six sites where there are still Palestinian militants,
01:51 either cells or in fact, lone gunmen there and two potential hostage situations being
01:57 reported.
01:59 That is hostage situations inside Israel, one in a kibbutz Kfar Azzah, one in a town
02:04 Sderot.
02:06 And those are being reported in the Israeli media at the moment.
02:12 All of that to say that this situation is so fluid and so and as yet ongoing, and Israeli
02:20 plans to clear all the civilians out of the south of the country before any ground war
02:26 could be anticipated or begun, that those are taking some time, taking some time to
02:33 be able to get into place.
02:35 Now with an estimated 130 Israelis, some of whom are dual nationals, being held as hostage
02:41 in Gaza, what military options do the Israelis actually have?
02:48 They have two sets of military options and each complicates the other.
02:52 They can simply go ahead.
02:53 Let's say they clear all the militants out of the south of the country.
02:58 They block the holes in the fence.
02:59 They are also investigating a tunnel, by the way, into Kfar Azzah, into that kibbutz where
03:04 there is currently fighting.
03:07 So if they clear all of that and they can secure the south of the country, can they
03:12 simply go in as if there were no hostages there?
03:16 Do they first have to do a hostage deal?
03:18 It is being reported in some media outlets that there are suggestions that this is already
03:26 begun, one from Qatar, one from Egypt, but Israel denies that.
03:31 So I don't know what the status of those reports are.
03:35 But if they get the dual nationals out at any rate or the men, leave the men and get
03:40 the women and the children and the old people out, does Israel then go ahead with a full
03:46 scale battle?
03:48 Is there a danger, which has been discussed openly here, that what we will could possibly
03:54 say is some of those hostages being taken out and shot hour by hour, that that is also
04:00 that they could be used in that sense.
04:02 They are really literally hostages.
04:05 And then, of course, there is the ongoing, as we see, ongoing intensive air strikes.
04:09 There's artillery strikes from inside Israel into the Gaza Strip.
04:13 There's naval strikes from the water into the Gaza Strip.
04:17 If there's a ground offensive as well, what happens to those people?
04:21 What happens to all the Palestinians, the ordinary civilians?
04:25 Where do they go?
04:26 You know, it's locked.
04:28 It's locked on the Israeli side, except for the holes in the border fence now.
04:32 Will it remain locked on the on the Egyptian side if there's a full scale ground invasion?
04:38 All those questions still to be answered.
04:40 But there's no doubt that the fact that there are 130 reported hostages held inside the
04:47 Gaza Strip complicates all this enormously from an Israeli military point of view.