Israel said it destroyed the home of the leader of Hamas in Gaza yesterday as it unleashed its deadliest round of air strikes in the conflict so far and vowed to use “full force” despite urgent United Nations calls for a ceasefire.

Video footage published by the Israeli army showed plumes of smoke rising from the home of Yahya Sinwar, the most senior Hamas commander in the Gaza Strip, but there were no immediate reports that he had been killed or injured during the strike.

The 58-year-old Gaza chief is regarded as the Islamist group’s military and strategic mastermind. He spent two decades in an Israeli prison, speaks fluent Hebrew and is believed to understand the Israeli strategy well, making him a top target for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).

The IDF also targeted what they said was a Hamas underground military base in Gaza City with an overnight assault that brought down three residential buildings.

Gaza officials said the attack killed 42 people, including 10 children, bringing the Palestinian death toll to 188, while 10 people have died on the Israeli side.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said yesterday that the bombing would continue with “full force” and claimed that the IDF had already destroyed “most” of Hamas’s tunnels in Gaza.

“We have struck very hard at Hamas’s underground activity,” Mr Netanyahu said. “Hamas invested an entire decade and vast capital in the excavation of tunnels; most of it, not all, but a considerable part, is gone.”

The IDF said that Hamas had been firing rockets at a higher rate than ever during this month’s Gaza conflict, with 2,809 missiles launched towards Israel in just six days. In contrast, military chiefs said, Hamas fired 4,481 rockets over 51 days during the 2014 Gaza war.

In a UN Security Council meeting yesterday, Antonio Guterres, the UN secretary-general, said it was “engaging all sides toward an immediate ceasefire” and urged them “to allow mediation efforts to intensify and succeed”.

Riyad Mansour, a Palestinian diplomat, said “there are no words that [describe] the horrors our people are enduring.”

Gilad Erdan, the Israeli UN representative, accused Hamas of “[using] civilians as human shields” and insisted the Jewish state was “taking unparalleled steps” to avoid civilian casualties.

Throughout yesterday, Hamas continued to fire dozens of rockets at Israeli towns and cities. Video footage posted on social media showed that one rocket had destroyed a car in Ashqelon, a town near the Gaza border. Among the dead on the Israeli side are two children and a man who was killed on Saturday by a rocket in Ramat Gan, a suburb of Tel Aviv.

Yesterday, seven people were injured by a car-ramming attack in Sheikh Jarrah, an East Jerusalem neighbourhood which has been the scene of multiple protests over Israeli plans to evict a dozen Palestinian families.

Israeli police said four police officers were wounded in the attack and that the assailant was “shot by officers”, without giving further details.

As the bloodshed continued, Palestinian leaders on the West Bank turned some of their anger upon fellow Arab nations which last year signed normalisation treaties with Israel, known as the Abraham Accords.

“Normalisation and running towards this colonial Israeli system without achieving peace and ending the Israeli occupation of Arab and Palestinian lands represents support for the apartheid regime and participation in its crimes,” Riyad al-Maliki, the Palestinian foreign minister, said.

He appeared to be referring to the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, who established full diplomatic ties with Israel last year and have struck a number of trade deals.

Middle East analysts noted that it took several days before Mohamed al-Khaja, the Emirati ambassador to Israel, issued a statement on the violence.

Pope Francis, meanwhile, described the loss of life on both the Palestinian and Israeli side as “terrible and unacceptable”, warning that the latest conflict could get even worse.

“In these days, violent armed clashes between the Gaza Strip and Israel have taken over, and risk degenerating into a spiral of death and destruction,” said the Pope following his Sunday Regina caeli prayer.

(© Telegraph Media Group Ltd 2021)

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021]