The death toll in Gaza rises to more than 620 Palestinians, including three children and 10 women, one of whom was pregnant

 

AFP

Gaza 

 

A rocket fired from Gaza yesterday forced airlines to halt flights to Israel, as the UN chief urged an end to a conflict that has killed over 620 Palestinians.

As the violence entered its third week, the United States and Egypt discussed ceasefire proposals in Cairo, and the Palestinian leadership sought to coax Hamas to end hostilities.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, on a visit to Tel Aviv, appealed to Israel and the Islamist movement to “stop fighting” and “start talking”, but neither side appeared willing to do so.

Israel insisted it would press on with its punishing aerial and ground assault until it destroys cross-border tunnels used by Gaza militants to launch attacks on the Jewish state, while Hamas continued to fire rockets and inflicted more casualties on the army.

One rocket that crashed just a few kilometres north of Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion international airport prompted the US Federal Aviation Authority to ban airlines from flying to and from Israel for at least 24 hours.

The European Aviation Safety Agency advised all carriers to avoid Tel Aviv “until further notice”.

Following top-level talks in Cairo, Ban headed to Israel to deliver his message in person as the 15-day conflict showed no sign of easing.

“My message to Israelis and Palestinians is the same: Stop fighting, start talking and take on the root causes of the conflict so that we are not at the same situation in the next six months or a year,” he said.

In Cairo, US Secretary of State John Kerry discussed ceasefire proposals with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi with both voicing guarded hopes of an end to the violence.

And a senior Palestinian official said talks were ongoing between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas for a ceasefire.

Israel initially refused to halt its fire without finishing a ground operation to destroy tunnels used by Hamas for attacks inside Israeli territory, and Hamas has rejected ceasefire proposals presented by Egypt, saying its own demands must first be met.

Despite the flurry of diplomatic activity, the death toll on the ground in Gaza rose to more than 620 Palestinians, medics said, including three children and 10 women, one of whom was pregnant.

Israel pummelled targets throughout the besieged coastal enclave, with its tanks even hitting a UN school sheltering the displaced, said the United Nations’ Palestinian refugee agency, Unrwa.

At the time a team, with Israeli clearance, was at the school observing damage from a possible strike the day before.

“While they were there, they came under Israeli shelling,” an official said, adding there were holes blown through the walls of the school compound, but that no-one was hurt.

Since the offensive, more than 100,000 Gazans have fled their homes, seeking shelter in 69 schools run by Unrwa.

The Israeli military said two more of its soldiers had been killed in the fighting a day earlier, hiking its overall death toll to 29, among them 27 soldiers who died in the past four days. 

Despite its rising body count, Israel said it would only halt its Gaza offensive after laying waste to a sophisticated network of tunnels used by militants for cross-border attacks. 

A ceasefire “won’t happen before we really finish the tunnels project which was laid out as a strategic objective”, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni said, referring to a ground offensive launched on Thursday evening.

She said Hamas’s “completely unacceptable” preconditions for a truce had “no chance of being accepted by anyone”.

Hamas has laid out a list of demands for halting its fire, including a lifting of Israel’s eight-year blockade on Gaza, the release of dozens of prisoners, and the opening of its Rafah border crossing with Egypt.

As he touched down in Tel Aviv, the UN’s Ban demanded the two sides immediately hold their fire.

Describing Hamas rocket fire on Israel as “shocking”, he said it must “stop immediately”.

But he also said Israel must exercise “maximum restraint” in Gaza, and he urged it to take a hard look at some of the root causes of the conflict “so people will not feel they have to resort to violence as a means of expressing their grievances”.

 

Jazeera evacuates office as shots fired

Al Jazeera evacuated its bureau in Gaza when it came under fire yesterday, the network said.

Two warning shots were fired at the 11-storey Jalaa building in central Gaza City, housing local and international media as well as private apartments, an AFP correspondent reported.

“Two very precise shots were fired straight into our building,” said Al Jazeera reporter in Gaza Stefanie Dekker, according to the channel’s English-language website.

The empty missiles were directed at Al Jazeera’s office, prompting journalists, along with a number of families who had sought refuge there from Sunday’s fighting in Shejaiya, to leave.

“We came here from Shejaiya,” said a woman standing outside with three female relatives, nine children and an elderly man. “There doesn’t seem to be anywhere that is safe.”

Al Jazeera has offered extensive coverage from Gaza since Israel began its military campaign against the Hamas-controlled coastal strip on July 8.

The channel “holds Israel responsible for the safety of its team in Gaza after its bureau came under fire”, Al Jazeera Arabic-language channel said.

 

 

 

 

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