Israel’s bombardment of Gaza left dozens more Palestinians dead yesterday after a black day for the Israeli army, with the spiral of violence showing no sign of abating.
As the conflict entered its fourth week, diplomatic efforts by the international community and calls for an end to the bloodshed fell on deaf ears, despite the mounting toll in human life and destruction in the narrow coastal enclave.
Both sides appeared more determined than ever to keep up the fighting.
Photo: Reuters
The Israeli offensive, which began on July 8 to end Hamas rocket attacks on Israel, has cost the lives of more than 1,100 Palestinians, civilians for the most part according to the UN, while Israel has lost 53 soldiers, the heaviest toll since the conflict with Hezbollah in 2006.
Three civilians — two Israelis and a Thai worker — have also died on Israeli soil after being struck by rockets fired from Gaza.
After an uneasy truce to mark the end of the holy month of Ramadan and the Eid al-Fitr holiday on Monday, a deluge of bombs rained down on Gaza throughout the night.
Several tank shells struck Gaza’s sole power plant, causing damage and a fire, bringing it grinding to a halt, a senior official with the power authority said.
An air strike targeted the home of top Hamas leader Ismail Haniya in Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp, officials said.
By the time dawn broke on the second day of Eid, at least 24 people had been killed, among them nine women and four children, medics said.
“Suddenly, missiles were falling like rain,” Gaza resident Mohamed al-Dalo said. “We all left our homes, some running in one direction, some in another, nobody knew which way to go, but people were calling out: ‘Evacuate.’”
The WHO now estimates that more than 215,000 people, or one Gazan in every eight, have fled their homes in the overcrowded territory.
Many have headed for already-cramped UN schools in the north, where children ran barefoot around a dirty school yard alongside stinking piles of rubbish.
Meanwhile, Israel yesterday announced that another five soldiers had been killed in an ambush by militants the previous evening after they sneaked into southern Israel by a tunnel.
Also on Monday, a mortar killed four soldiers near a kibbutz in southern Israel, the army said, while also indicating that another soldier had been killed in action in southern Gaza.
Their deaths raised to 53 the total number of soldiers killed in the Gaza offensive.
Following a relatively quiet weekend, the violence surged again on Monday, drawing increasingly urgent international demands for an end to the fighting.
“In the name of humanity, the violence must stop,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said.
However, the calls went unheeded, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warning on Monday that it would be “a lengthy campaign” that would not end before troops destroyed cross-border tunnels used for staging attacks on southern Israel.
“Israeli citizens cannot live with the threat from rockets and from death tunnels — death from above and from below,” he said.
Tensions had risen sharply after a shell on Monday landed inside the Shifa hospital compound in Gaza City, followed by a blast at a children’s playground in the city’s Shati refugee camp, that killed 10, eight of them children.
Residents in Shati said an F-16 fired several missiles at a motorized rickshaw in a claim denied by the Israeli army, which also said it had not targeted the hospital.
“We have not fired on the hospital or on Shati refugee camp,” Major Arye Shalicar said, adding that the army had footage showing militants firing at Israel, but the missiles falling short and striking targets inside Gaza.
With the toll of Palestinian dead rising, Iran’s supreme leader accused Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza, and demanded the Islamic world arm those Palestinians involved in fighting the Jewish state.
In a speech yesterday marking the Eid festival, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Israel was acting like a “rabid dog” and “a wild wolf” and causing a human catastrophe in Gaza, where people should be helped to defend itself.
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