Israel says part of Hamas 'dismantled' as war enters fourth month

Israel said it had "dismantled" Hamas's military leadership in northern Gaza as its war against the Palestinian group entered its fourth month Sunday, with fears mounting that the conflict could spread into neighbouring Lebanon.

Witnesses said Israel carried out air strikes early Sunday in Gaza's main southern city of Khan Yunis, with the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reporting numerous dead and wounded.

Israel's army said late Saturday it had "completed the dismantling of the Hamas military framework in the northern Gaza Strip" and its forces would now focus on central and southern areas of the territory.

The prospect of a wider regional war loomed with army spokesman Daniel Hagari warning that Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah group was "dragging Lebanon into an unnecessary war".

The group fired more than 60 rockets at an Israeli military base on Saturday in response to this week's killing in Beirut of Hamas's deputy leader.

The war in Gaza was triggered by an unprecedented attack on Israel launched by Hamas on October 7, which resulted in the deaths of around 1,140 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

The fighters also took around 250 hostages, 132 of whom remain in captivity, according to Israel, including at least 24 believed to have been killed.

In response, Israel is carrying out a relentless bombardment and ground invasion that have killed at least 22,722 people, most of them women and children, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that Israel would continue its campaign to "eliminate Hamas, return our hostages and ensure that Gaza will no longer be a threat to Israel".

Netanyahu was under growing pressure on Saturday with demonstrators gathering in Tel Aviv's Habima Square to call for early elections and the resignation of his government.

"Bibi Netanyahu and all the rest of his idiots are ruining Israel and they are destroying everything we hoped and dreamed of," Shachaf Netzer, 54, told AFP.

"Everybody here wants an election."

'Uninhabitable'

AFP correspondents reported Israeli strikes on Saturday in the southern city of Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of people have sought shelter from the fighting.

Victims of the bombardment were brought to the European Hospital in Khan Yunis, where relatives and mourners gathered.

One of them, Mohamed Awad, wept over the body of a 12-year-old boy and counted the deaths in his family.

"My brother, his wife, his children, his relatives and the brothers of his wife -- there are more than 20 martyrs," Awad, a journalist, told AFP.

Civilians in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip have borne the brunt of the conflict as the scale of the destruction has triggered mass displacement and a deepening humanitarian crisis.

With swathes of the territory reduced to rubble, UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths on Friday said "Gaza has simply become uninhabitable".

The World Health Organization says most of Gaza's 36 hospitals have been put out of action by the fighting, while remaining medical facilities face dire shortages.

In Gaza City, bereaved Palestinians reburied bodies exhumed from a cemetery, an AFP video showed.