PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Israel's military ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip, increasing airstrikes and halting deliveries of food, water, fuel and supplies to its more than 2 million people — in retaliation for a bloody incursion by Hamas militants on Saturday.
Hamas responded with a pledge to kill captured Israelis if any further attacks from Israel targeted Palestinian civilians without warning. In the war's third day, Israel was still finding bodies from the weekend attack. The death toll on both sides has risen to more than 1,500 people.
Correspondent Jordana Miller, joining KYW Newsradio from Jerusalem, said the Hamas militants "acted with the brutality that reminds us of ISIS." She described the chaos along the Gaza Strip and what she has seen and heard with regard to the ongoing fighting in a conversation with KYW's Denise Nakano.
🎧 Jordana Miller from Jerusalem
"Right now the Israeli army says they've pretty much gained control of the border area," Miller said. "There are few spots where there's some fighting, some suspected infiltration still, but for the most part, the Israeli army is now in control of those border communities."
Miller said Israel has sealed off Gaza, not only preventing food, water, electrical power and fuel — they have also put up blocks where the original surprise assault happened.
"There were lots of breaks in the border fence that have now been blocked, preventing anyone else from coming over. And they do suspect there were also some active tunnels that they also destroyed," she said.
Miller said, now that survivors who have been evacuated into central and northern Israel are talking to the media about what they lived through over the weekend, reporters are getting a fuller picture of what happened on Saturday.
"The country is still completely traumatized by this attack, the brutality of it. ... And it's absolutely terrifying."
She described people hiding in their safe rooms, holding tightly to the knob of a door, while militants on the other side tried to open it — hearing people in their homes and hearing their neighbors getting shot and killed.
"I mean, these Palestinian militants, they acted with the brutality that reminds us of ISIS, really. They went on a shooting rampage at an overnight music festival — 260 bodies found there. That's why the fatalities, the 900, you know, 95% of them are from gunshot wounds, not from rocket attacks."