Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said last night that Israel was prepared to extend its military operation in Gaza and he warned that campaign must end with the demilitarisation of Gaza.
He spoke after four Israeli troops were killed in a mortar attack and five militants, who infiltrated into Israel via a tunnel, were killed in a close- range exchange of fire.
“It cannot be that Israeli citizens will live under threat of rockets and the tunnel threat – death from above, death from below,” he said.
“The operation will take time. We must finish the goal of the operation – to destroy the tunnels. This is a first and crucial step in disarming Gaza, and demilitarising Gaza must be part of any solution and the international community to push for this.”
Heavy Israeli artillery shelling was reported last night after the Israeli army sent phone and SMS messages to residents of the Zeitoun neighbourhood in southern Gaza city and Jabalya, to the north, to vacate their homes immediately.
Calls for truce
Militants fired rockets south of the city of Haifa, deep into northern Israel.
The escalation came after international calls for a humanitarian truce to coincide with the Muslim festival of Eid al-Fitr, which began yesterday, were not been heeded.
Earlier, 10 Gaza residents, most of them children, were killed in a park close to the Shifa hospital compound in the al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza city. Forty people were wounded. Both sides blamed each other.
Senior Hamas officials have taken refuge in the well-guarded shelter beneath the hospital, but Israel was quick to deny that its forces had targeted the medical facility or the Shati camp, saying an errant rocket fired by Islamic jihad militants from the hospital compound, exploded in the area.
The four Israeli soldiers were killed when a mortar bomb landed close to a kibbutz on the Gaza border. Three others were seriously wounded.
Infiltrated
Five militants who infiltrated into Israel were killed in an exchange of fire with troops close to kibbutz Nahal Oz on the border. The militants had entered Israel via a tunnel.
The latest military fatalities further raised pressure on the Israeli leadership to order an escalation of the military campaign. A poll, taken before last night’s incidents, showed that 87 per cent of Israelis support the continuation of the warfare in Gaza, with 69 per cent saying the war should result in the toppling of the Hamas regime.
Last night’s upsurge in violence followed a relatively quiet day after militant groups had proposed a truce and Israel responded by declaring that “quiet will be met with quiet”. Residents ventured on to the streets, although the mass destruction meant there was little to celebrate on the Eid.
More than 1,060 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and 48 Israeli soldiers and three civilians have been killed since the start of Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge”, now in its third week. A Thai worker in Israel has also died.
United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon reinforced the security council’s earlier call for “an immediate and unconditional humanitarian ceasefire” and demanded that Israel and Hamas end the violence “in the name of humanity”.
