The Hamas leader has stated they are prepared for an extended conflict in Gaza.

Yahya Sinwar of Hamas said Monday that the Palestinian group possessed plenty of money and resources to continue its battle against Israel, with the backing of regional partners funded by Iran, at least over the past nine months of the Gaza conflict.

Sinwar, who last month succeeded Hamas’ slain chief in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, wrote in a letter to the movement’s Yemen-based allies that “We have set ourselves to pursue a war of endurance”. Fierce battles continued at the same time in the Gaza Strip, where medics and rescuers reported at least 24 killed in Israeli air raids on Monday that the Israeli military has not yet addressed.

The latest strikes occurred at the same time that Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant stated that chances of ending the hostilities with Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon were becoming increasingly bleak, thus increasing concerns about a broad conflict in the region yet again.

Hamas official Osama Hamdan said in an interview with AFP on Sunday that although Hamas suffered substantial losses, “it has a high capacity to endure,” citing “recruiting generations” of new members to replace the dead this week. Last week, they stated that Hamas, which attacked on October 7 to precipitate the war, “does not exist any more” as the combined military force in Gaza.

Sinwar, in his letter to Huthis of Yemen, claimed that Iran-affiliated factions in Gaza and other areas of the Middle East, including Lebanon and Iraq, were ready to ‘bust Israel’s spirit’, which took more than 11 months of battle. The UN human rights body urged Western countries to ensure Israeli unlawful action in Gaza, saying it could turn the country into an ‘outcast.’

The July 12 bombing of southern Lebanon that led to the start of the war killed 1,205 people, the majority of them noncombatants, according to an AFP count using Israeli data.

Militants also captured 251 hostages; 97 of them are still in Gaza, and 33, according to the Israeli military, are already dead. Sides have heightened in the north of Israel with Lebanon with anxieties that the conflict may turn into a full-scale war.

“The moment for the agreement is fading as Hezbollah links itself with Hamas and does not cease the fighting,” Gallant said in a conversation with the visiting US envoy Amos Hochstein, as quoted in a defence ministry statement.

The Israeli media claimed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was planning to replace Gallant, but the premier’s office dismissed the rumors. Gallant, who barely escaped an earlier attempt by Netanyahu to sack him in March 2023, is among officials who are constantly in disagreement with Netanyahu over war policies.

In the latter part of Monday, Netanyahu informed Hochstein he requires a ‘paradigm shift’ on the security posture along the Northern frontier of Israel. Gulf News reports that Hezbollah, an Iran-backed group in Lebanon, has been targeting Israeli forces almost daily since October 7, citing support for its ally Hamas.

Hezbollah deputy chief Naim Qassem stated his group has no intention of going to war, but if Israel does portray it in that way, there will be a significant loss on both sides. The fighting since early October has claimed 624 lives in Lebanon, many of them combatants but also at least 141 civilians, an AFP count shows.

Authorities on the Israeli side –in the occupied territories, including the Golan Heights – have stated the death of at least 24 soldiers and 26 civilians. Civilian residents returned to search for their loved ones in central Gaza on Monday after an attack on the Nuseirat refugee camp.

An airstrike targeted the house of Al-Qassas family in Nuseirat in the morning; 10 people were killed, and another 15 were injured, a medic of Al-Awda Hospital said, adding that the bodies were brought to the hospital. “My house was bombed at night while all of us were asleep; there was no warning”, complained survivor Rashed al-Qassas.

Gaza’s civil defence report that six civilians were killed in a similar strike at night on the house owned by the Bassal family in the Zeitun neighbourhood in Gaza City. The emergency services identified six more bodies; Al-Awda Hospital said it had received three bodies belonging to people killed in the Israeli attack on Nuseirat.