38 killed as Israel pounds Gaza
Print Edition
ISRAELI air strikes shook Gaza every few minutes yesterday, and militants kept up rocket fire at Israel’s heartland in intensifying warfare in the Hamas-dominated enclave.
Eleven women and children were among 17 Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza yesterday, hiking the overall death toll to 38 in two days, the emergency services said.
Missiles from the Iron Dome defence system shot into the sky to intercept rockets launched, for the second straight day, at Tel Aviv, the country’s commercial capital.
Other communities near Tel Aviv in central Israel and in the south, closer to Gaza, were also targeted. In the longest-range attack since Tuesday, when Israel stepped up its offensive, a rocket hit near Zichron Yaakov, a town 115 kilometers north of Gaza.
No serious Israeli fatalities or serious injuries were reported and Israeli news reports hailed as heroes the military crews of the Iron Dome batteries, which are made in Israel and partly funded by the United States. The military said 48 rockets struck Israel yesterday, and Iron Dome intercepted 14 others.
The Israeli military said it had bombarded 550 Hamas sites, including 60 rocket launchers and 11 homes of senior Hamas members. It described those dwellings as command centres.
Palestinian officials said at least 25 houses were either destroyed or damaged and not all belonged to Hamas militants.
The build-up to the most serious hostilities between Israel and Gaza militants since an eight-day war in 2012 began three weeks ago with rocket attacks following the abduction and killing of three Jewish seminary students in the occupied West Bank.
At least 30 civilians, including six children, were among the 38 Palestinian dead in two days of fighting, and 230 people have been wounded, hospital officials said.
Egypt brokered a truce in the conflict two years ago, but the current government’s hostility toward Hamas, which it accuses of aiding militants in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, could make a mediation role more difficult. Hamas denies the allegations.
Palestinian rocket barrages have sent Israelis racing for bomb shelters, with radio stations interrupting regular broadcasts to announce where sirens have sounded. But the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange seemed untroubled, ending the day with shares slightly higher.
Israeli leaders have warned of a lengthy campaign and possible ground invasion of the heavily populated Palestinian territory.
“We have decided to step up even more the attacks on Hamas and terrorist organizations in Gaza,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. “The Israel Defence Forces are prepared for every option. Hamas will pay a heavy price for firing at Israeli citizens.”
Netanyahu’s security cabinet has already approved the potential mobilisation of up to 40,000 reserve troops.
In an air strike on a home in northern Gaza, a top leader of the Islamic Jihad group and five of his family members were killed, the Palestinian Interior Ministry said. An 80-year-old Palestinian woman was killed in an Israeli attack on another target in central Gaza, local officials said.
The United States backed Israel’s actions in Gaza, while the European Union and United Nations urged restraint on both sides.
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