Hamas fighters made precise calculations about the capacity of Israel's air defense forces and worked out the number of rockets necessary to 'overload' the Iron Dome,' military expert Alexei Leonkov told Sputnik.

🗣 "It was a classic case: if one seeks to suppress rival air defenses, an air raid has to be calculated in a way where the number of airstrikes exceeds existing air defense capabilities. Roughly speaking, if Israel has 200 interceptors, we are talking about 400 required missiles," he explained.

Leonkov added that the sheer scale of Hamas’ missile attacks simply overwhelmed the Iron Dome. “If Israel had expected 5,000 missiles launched all at once, Israeli intelligence would have accumulated far more Iron Dome launchers and surface-to-air missile (SSM) for their rapid recharge,” he said.

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📹 Benjamin Netanyahu published a video of the attacks on the Gaza Strip, accompanied by the caption: "We have begun. Israel will win!"

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Russia warned about US weapons for Ukraine ending on black market months before bloodbath in Israel

Hours after Hamas militants launched an attack against Israeli populations and forces, some commentators started suggesting that Palestinian militants might be using weapons procured from Ukraine.

One of them is US House Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who suggested that Hamas may be using US weapons that were either abandoned by US forces during withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 or supplied to the regime in Kiev by the Biden administration since February 2022. She is yet to provide any evidence to back up her claims, however.

Long before such concerns were raised in the West, Russia's Foreign Ministry had repeatedly warned in public that weaponry eagerly provided by the US and NATO to Ukraine may find its way to the global black market.

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🇫🇷 Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was spotted at the rally

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❗️Hamas threatens to execute one hostage in response to every Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip

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The president of Israel has claimed that such a high number of Israelis had not died in one day since the Holocaust

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🇺🇸 US pediatric care in sorry state amid upsurge in youth mortality rate

A new study has concluded that mortality rates among children and teenagers in the United States increased by about 20 percent between 2019 and 2021.

Homicide, suicide, drug overdoses and car accidents were identified as primary reasons for this upsurge among Americans aged between 10 and 19. The study authors also pointed out that COVID-19 “contributed little” to this trend.

In this context, Dr. Yolanda Hancock, a board-certified pediatrician and public health expert who was not involved in the study, told Sputnik that the worrying situation is exacerbated by an apparent lack of proper pediatric care in the United States.

Check out Sputnik's article to find out more on this topic

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❗️The Israeli military will not hold back in attacking Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, despite the risk of harming its citizens who were captured, Israeli media reports

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❗️A Hamas spokesman said that among the Israeli prisoners there are “dozens” of people with second citizenship, western media report

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📹🇺🇸 Robert Francis Kennedy Jr. has announced that he will run for US president as an independent.

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⚡️Latest statements by Benjamin Netanyahu addressing the nation:

▪️Netanyahu assures nation that Israel will win 'in this war with Hamas';

▪️Hamas fighters still present in Israel;

▪️Netanyahu ready to establish emergency government without preconditions.

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⚡️Hezbollah says shells Israeli military facilities after death of three of its fighters

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🇵🇬 The twin earthquakes that hit Papua New Guinea this weekend have significantly damaged the runway of the Madang Province's airport, leaving it with long deep cracks requiring repairs, Prime Minister James Marape stated on Monday.

Magnitude 6.7 and 6.9 quakes hit near Madang on Saturday. There have been no reports of casualties and damage so far.

Marape was quoted as saying by a newspaper that the government had tasked a senior inspector with checking the airport for damage.

"[The inspector] identified long cracks along the runway as a direct result of the earthquake. The location of the cracks is between 70m and 170m from the runway threshold. The fence line beyond runway 25 threshold was also damaged," the prime minister was quoted as saying, adding "There will be an urgent pavement repair work to be carried out on the runway and along the fence."

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❗️ The Palestinian side expects that Israel's offensive on the Gaza Strip may begin soon, Palestinian Ambassador to Russia Abdel Hafiz Nofal said on Russian TV channel.

"The cessation of electricity supplies is a very strong signal. We pay for this electricity, we pay for everything else too. It means that Israel is preparing for an offensive on the Gaza Strip, it will start today or tomorrow," the diplomat said.

❗️ Hamas said it does not intend to negotiate on the issue of prisoners while the fighting continues