Israel kills 42 in Gaza as Netanyahu warns war will go on

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip —  Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City have flattened three buildings and killed at least 42 people.

Despite international efforts to broker a cease-fire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signaled Sunday that the fourth war with Gaza’s Hamas rulers would rage on.

In a televised address, Netanyahu said the attacks were continuing at “full-force” and will “take time.“ He said Israel “wants to levy a heavy price” from Hamas.

The violence marked the worst fighting here since the devastating 2014 war in Gaza. The airstrikes Sunday hit a downtown street of residential buildings and storefronts over the course of five minutes just after midnight.

Netanyahu on Sunday also renewed his claim that a Gaza building leveled by an Israeli airstrike housed a Hamas office as well as American and Middle East news organizations, but gave no evidence.

Netanyahu spoke to CBS’s Face the Nation about ongoing violence between Israeli forces and the armed Palestinian group Hamas, and about Saturday’s airstrike that leveled the building housing Gaza offices of the Associated Press and Al Jazeera news organizations. “It’s a perfectly legitimate target,” he said.

Asked if he had provided any evidence of Hamas presence in the building in a call later Saturday with President Joe Biden, Netanyahu said, “We pass it through our intelligence people.”

Netanyahu gave no time frame for when Israel would be ready to halt its side of the fighting after nearly a week of Israeli airstrikes and Hamas rocket barrages. “We hope that it doesn’t continue very long, but we were attacked by Hamas,” he said.

Asked about reports that Hamas had agreed to an Egypt-brokered cease-fire but Israel had not, he said, “That’s not what I know.”