Reuters
Israeli air strikes killed at least nine Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and resistance fighters kept up cross-border rocket fire yesterday as Israel moved to cushion its economy against the effects of a war now in its seventh week.
Egypt pressed on with efforts to broker a durable truce, and the Bank of Israel, fearing the conflict would slow economic growth, cut its benchmark interest rate by a quarter-point to 0.25%, its lowest level ever.
Gazans said they received new recorded messages on mobile phones and landlines saying Israel would target any house used to launch “attacks” and telling civilians to leave areas used by Palestinian fighters.
Israeli aircraft attacked four homes in the town of Beit Lahiya, near the Israeli border, killing two women and a girl.
Locals told Reuters a member of the Hamas group lived in one of the dwellings. Six other Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes, including three men in an attack on a car and a Gaza journalist identified as Abdallah Murtaja in a separate attack, officials said.
After nightfall an Israeli air strike outside a Gaza City mosque wounded 25 people, as worshippers filed out after evening prayers.
More than 100 rockets were launched at southern Israel yesterday, and one Israeli was wounded by a mortar bomb, the army said.
Palestinian health officials say 2,123 people, most of them civilians, including more than 490 children, have been killed in Gaza since July 8, when Israel launched an offensive with the declared aim of ending rocket fire into its territory.
Sixty-four Israeli soldiers and four civilians in Israel have been killed.
Gazans said they had received messages on their phones for several days, with a new recording yesterday ending with the words: “To Hamas leaders and to the residents of Gaza: The battle is open and you have been warned.”
Despite the raging violence, there were signs that the sides might be edging toward a new ceasefire.
Qais Abu Leila, a senior Palestinian official involved in Egyptian-mediated talks to reach a truce, said Cairo had proposed an indefinite ceasefire.
Cairo’s latest initiative calls for the immediate opening of Gaza’s crossings with Israel and Egypt to aid reconstruction efforts in the battered coastal strip, to be followed by talks on a longer-term easing of the blockade.
An Israeli official speaking on condition of anonymity said Israel would consider the proposal if Hamas were to accept it.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said of Egypt’s proposals that “if Israel agreed to it, we would be heading towards an agreement”.
In Gaza City on Sunday, an Israeli strike on a car killed Mohamed al-Ghoul, described by the Israeli military as a key Hamas official.
Israel later bombed and destroyed Ghoul’s house. He was targeted three days after Israel killed three top Hamas commanders in the southern Gaza Strip.
Thousands of homes in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed or damaged in the conflict. Nearly 500,000 people have been displaced in the territory where Palestinians, citing Israeli attacks that have hit schools and mosques, say no place is safe.
Iran vows to ‘accelerate’ arming Palestinians
Tehran will “accelerate” arming Palestinians in retaliation for Israel deploying a spy drone over Iran, which was shot down, a military commander said in Tehran yesterday. Iran has confirmed it supplied Palestinian fighters from Hamas and the Islamic Jihad with the technology for the rockets being fired relentlessly into Israel from Gaza since July 8. “We will accelerate the arming of the West Bank and we reserve the right to give any response,” said General Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, commander of aerial forces of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, in a statement on their official website sepahnews.com.