Israel widens attacks to Gaza high-rise buildings

Israel has expanded its military attacks in Gaza and is now targeting high-rise residential buildings where it says rockets have been launched or stored.

Up until now it has avoided such targets but the shift in policy followed the death of a four-year-old boy on a kibbutz, close to the Gaza border when a mortar shell landed outside his home on Friday.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there will be no let-up in Operation Protective Edge, which tomorrow enters its 50th day, until the aim of restoring calm is achieved. "I call on Gaza residents to leave any location from which Hamas is conducting terror activities," he said. "Every such place is a target for us. We have seen in recent days that there isn't, and won't be, any immunity for someone who fires on the citizens of Israel."

Warning shot

On Saturday, after warning residents to leave and the firing of a warning shot five minutes before the attack, Israel bombed an apartment tower in Gaza city, causing the 12-storey building to collapse. Israel said the building housed a Hamas command and control centre and that rockets were stored in the basement. Similar air strikes targeted a number of residential buildings at the weekend.

The Hamas interior ministry urged residents not heed Israeli warnings to evacuate areas used by militants to fire rockets. At least 13 Gaza residents were killed in Israeli strikes yesterday.

Yesterday marked the start of the school year in Gaza but most schools are being used as shelters for the thousands of families displaced during the conflict. Pupils held memorial ceremonies for those killed, before being sent home.

Despite the escalation in Israel bombardments, Gaza militants have maintained a barrage of rocket fire into Israel.

Crossing closed

Israel yesterday closed the Erez crossing to Gaza after a three Israeli Arabs, employed to drive wounded Gaza residents to Israeli hospitals, were injured by a mortar shell.

Since the collapse of the temporary truce last week, most of the militant fire has been directed at Israeli communities close to the Gaza border, resulting in thousands of Israeli families leaving their homes. Rockets were also fired at northern Israel overnight Saturday.

Five rockets fired from Syria landed in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and a rocket fired from south Lebanon hit an empty house in the western Galilee. Israel complained to UNifil, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, but refrained from returning fire.

More than 2,100 Palestinians – mostly civilians – and 68 Israelis, 64 of them soldiers, have been killed in the fighting.