Hamas says it has captured Israeli soldier

Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri in Gaza claimed Sunday evening his group had captured an Israeli soldier. An announcement on Gaza TV of the soldier’s capture set off celebration in the streets of Gaza City.

But the claim could not immediately be verified and the Israeli military said it was investigating the report.

‘‘There’s no kidnapped Israeli soldier,’’ Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., Ron Prosor, told reporters Sunday night.

Hamas has made similar claims of capturing Israelis in the past that were not true. For Israelis, a captured soldier would be a nightmare scenario. Hamas-allied militants seized an Israeli soldier in a cross-border raid in 2006 and held him captive in Gaza until Israel traded more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, some of whom were involved in grisly killings, for his return in 2011.

The first major ground battle in two weeks of Israel-Hamas fighting exacted a steep price Sunday: It killed 65 Palestinians and 13 Israeli soldiers and forced thousands of terrified Palestinian civilians to flee their neighborhood, reportedly used to launch rockets at Israel and now devastated by the fighting.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the offensive would continue ‘‘as long as necessary’’ to end attacks from Gaza on Israeli civilians.

But Hamas seems defiant, international cease-fire efforts are stalled, and international criticism is becoming more vocal as the death toll among Palestinian civilians rises.

Bakudaily.az