Hamas accuses Israel of breaking the short-lived ceasefire, while the Jewish state says it responded to militant rocket fire
A humanitarian truce in Gaza collapsed only hours after it began yesterday amid a deadly new wave of violence and the apparent capture by Hamas of an Israeli soldier.
US President Barack Obama called for the soldier to be “unconditionally” released, but also said more must be done to protect Gaza civilians.
Intensive shelling killed dozens of people in southern Gaza hours into the truce, which began at 8am and had been due to last 72 hours.
Hamas accused Israel of breaking the short-lived ceasefire, while the Jewish state said it was responding to militant rocket fire.
The chances of a durable truce seemed as remote as ever after the probable capture of Israeli Second Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, 23.
The military also announced that two soldiers had been killed in the same incident near the southern city of Rafah.
“Our initial indications suggest a soldier has been abducted by terrorists in an incident where terrorists breached the ceasefire,” according to army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner.
He said a suicide bomber blew himself up, adding that first reports “indicate that a soldier was seized”.
In 2006, militants from Gaza captured Israeli conscript Gilad Shalit and held him for five years before freeing him in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.
Yesterday’s short truce gave brief respite to people in the battered Strip from fighting that has now killed 1,600 on the Palestinian side, mostly civilians, and 63 Israeli soldiers and three civilians on the other.
Within hours, air raid sirens were heard on the Israeli side, and heavy shelling resumed in Rafah.
Across Gaza, 160 people were killed or died of their wounds yesterday, including 65 in Rafah and 50 in Khan Younis, emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said.
An Israeli army spokeswoman said 51 rockets and mortar rounds hit Israel yesterday, with another nine rockets shot down by the Iron Dome missile defence system.
Obama said the United States “unequivocally condemned Hamas and the Palestinian factions that were responsible for killing two Israeli soldiers, and abducting a third almost minutes after a ceasefire had been announced”.
“If they are serious about trying to trying to resolve this situation, that soldier needs to be unconditionally released, as soon as possible.”
Obama added: “We have also been clear that innocent civilians in Gaza caught in the crossfire have to weigh on our conscience and we have to do more to protect them.”
Earlier yesterday, the Israeli military warned people in Gaza to remain at home, saying in voice messages to mobile phones that it was “pursuing terrorist elements in Rafah”.
US Secretary of State John Kerry had said that once the ceasefire was under way, Israeli and Palestinian representatives, including from Hamas, would begin talks in Cairo on a more durable truce.
The Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad later said Egypt was postponing the talks after news of the Israeli soldier’s capture, but Cairo said the invitation to talk was “still in place”.
And Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said a joint delegation, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, will travel to Cairo today for talks despite the renewed fighting.
Before the truce, Israeli tank fire and aerial bombardment killed 14 Palestinians in Gaza, and the army said five soldiers died in mortar fire near the shared border.
Only minutes before the truce began, Palestinians continued to fire rockets into southern Israel, with five brought down by missile defences, army radio said.
The truce came after the UN Security Council expressed “grave disappointment” that repeated ceasefire calls had gone unheeded, and demanded a series of humanitarian breaks to ease conditions for Gaza’s civilians.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office accused Hamas and other Gaza militants of “flagrantly violating” the ceasefire.
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum riposted that “it is the (Israeli) occupation which violated the ceasefire. The Palestinian resistance acted based on... the right to self defence.”
Residents find they have
no homes to go back to
Gaza’s agreed three-day ceasefire lasted only 90 minutes but for one Palestinian woman that was time enough to return to the street where she lives and find her home was a pile of rubble.
“Oh God, oh God!” she cried, breaking down in tears at the site of her family’s two houses. The buildings were once home to 75 people, testament to Gaza’s crushing population density.
“My house was flattened and so was the house of my children,” said the veiled woman, who did not want to give her name. She said she had lost a son in Israeli shelling of Shejaiya, an eastern district of Gaza where more than 70 people have been killed during three weeks of hostilities.
In other districts, returning Gaza residents found decomposing bodies under the wreckage of their homes.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians like her emerged from shelters at schools run by the United Nations and from the houses of relatives and friends to visit homes they had been forced to leave as Israeli forces targeted Gaza militants.
Many hoped the ceasefire agreed by Israel and Palestinian factions would turn into durable calm as both sides were ready to hold talks in Cairo in an attempt to end fighting that has killed 1,500 Palestinians and more than 60 Israeli soldiers.
For some, home was anything but sweet.
Last week, Nedal Abu Rjaila and his family had to run for cover as their houses came under fire from Israeli tanks in the town of Khuzaa in the southern Gaza Strip. Their sister, who is in a wheelchair, did not escape.
Abu Rjaila said one of his brothers was pushing the 17-year-old girl’s wheelchair when he was wounded and ran to seek help.
At 8am yesterday, when the ceasefire started, the brother ran towards where his sister lay, to find that she had been hit by a tank shell and her body had started to decompose.
The brother collapsed, lay on the ground next to his sister and refused to allow medics to remove her body.
“I need no ambulance, I am waiting for my mother to come and see her. This is a handicapped child, what crime did she commit to be hit by a shell?” he said.
Khuzaa, once an area of greenery and attractive villas, had been largely reduced to rubble. Rescue workers recovered 10 more decaying bodies, and dozens of houses had been flattened.
As the ceasefire began, people filled the streets of the narrow coastal territory, many walking back to their homes, while others used donkey carts or hitched rides on trucks.
Many hoped they would be able to leave the refuges where the United Nations is sheltering more than 225,000 people.
Zeyad al-Sultan, 39, from the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, said he did not feel safe at a shelter set up in a school by the United Nations and he hoped a durable ceasefire could be agreed.
“The UN shelter is like a prison, you have to share the bathroom with 2,000 people, it is too noisy and there is no privacy for women or for anyone,” he said as he waited for a car to take him and his five-member family back home.
But Sultan, like many in the refuge, said they were cautious about what lay in store for them. “We are going back to Beit Lahiya but we close one eye and open the other to see whether tanks will come back,” said Sultan.
His caution was not misplaced.
People from the Shejaiya neighbourhood said they were fired on by Israeli tanks, forcing them to return to the shelters and temporary lodgings they had just left.
In other areas, people left their homes again after news that the truce had collapsed. Some had hurriedly managed to retrieve clothes and blankets from their homes, and many bought food and water to take back to the shelters.
In Gaza City, streets that had filled soon after the truce came into force were empty again a few hours later as hopes for lasting quiet faded.
