32 More Palestinians Killed In Gaza, Death Toll Reaches 680

32 More Palestinians Killed In Gaza, Death Toll Reaches 680

By Ma'an News Agency

23 July, 2014
Maannews.net

GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- The continued Israeli offensive across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday afternoon left 32 Palestinians dead, bringing the total number killed since midnight to 56 as world and local leaders scrambled to arrange a ceasefire. Total death toll reached 680.

The high total on Wednesday afternoon came as Israeli forces continued their land invasion of the besieged coastal enclave while shelling and airstrikes bombarded the area from land and sea. The total death toll since the beginning of the operation 16 days ago has now reached 680, while at least 4,000 have been injured.

The Israeli military said on Wednesday that more than 60 access shafts leading to some 28 tunnels apparently belonging to Palestinian militants have been found, and around 4:30 p.m. said that they had struck over 70 sites across the Strip.

Israel originally claimed the operation in Gaza was meant to end rocket fire from Gaza, which had increased after an Israeli offensive in the West Bank began in June, but has since focused on attacking tunnels that it says Palestinians have used to attack Israeli soldiers.

The military also announced that two more soldiers had been killed by Palestinian militants in clashes in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, bringing the total death toll to 31, 29 of whom were soldiers. A foreign worker in southern Israel, meanwhile, was killed by a mortar on Wednesday.

On the ground, Saint Prophyrios Greek Orthodox church in Gaza City was packed to overflowing as hundreds of people, mostly women and children, sought shelter after escaping the inferno of neighboring areas like Shujaiyya, where Israeli forces have killed nearly a hundred in intense fighting in recent days.

"Many of them, their houses are destroyed. Many people have been injured or killed. So we try to help these people," said Archbishop Alexios, one of Gaza's 1,500 Palestinian Christians.

Some progress, more needed

On Wednesday, Kerry flew in from Cairo for whirlwind talks in Jerusalem and Ramallah, despite a US aviation warning on flights into Israel after a rocket struck near the runway a day earlier.

"We have certainly made some steps forward, but there is still work to be done," Kerry said in Jerusalem at the start of a meeting with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon whom he also met in Cairo on Monday.

The UN chief warned there was no time to lose.

"We are now joining our forces in strength to make a ceasefire as soon as possible," he said.

Kerry then went to the West Bank city of Ramallah for talks with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, and was later to return to Tel Aviv for talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He was expected to return to Cairo in the evening.

Meanwhile, top Fatah official Azzam al-Ahmad said that a ceasefire was being "finalized," adding that there had been "significant progress" hopes were high that the coming hours would be critical in ending the siege on Palestinians and the Gaza Strip.

An earlier attempt to push through an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire failed after Hamas said it had not been consulted on the ceasefire before its announcement, while Israel used the occasion to step up its attack and launch a ground invasion.

Hamas has since offered the possibility of ceasefire conditional on the end of a seven-year blockade that has crippled the Gaza Strip's economy and infrastructure.

On the eve of Kerry's visit, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas pledged Israel would be held accountable for the bloodshed in Gaza.

Abbas, who has been holding truce talks in Doha with Hamas' exiled leader Khaled Meshaal, called for "widespread popular protest" in solidarity with Gaza.

Protests have erupted across the West Bank in recent weeks in solidarity with Gaza, with one dead early Wednesday and at least another killed earlier in the week as Israeli forces violently dispersed demonstrations.

There has been a growing wave of protest across the West Bank and in Palestinian towns in Israel, with police saying they had arrested 800 Palestinian citizens of Israelis and another 295 from East Jerusalem in the past three weeks in protests which began before the July 8 start of Israel's Gaza campaign.

32 Gazans killed in 5 hours

The number of Palestinians killed in the Israeli assault soared on Wednesday afternoon to more than 30, Gaza medical authorities said.

Ahmad Sihweil was killed in an Israeli airstrike that targeted a group of people in al-Qarrara in eastern Khan Younis.

Raid al-Radee, and Ziyad al-Radee, and their child Salma were killed during an Israeli attack on Beit Lahiya.

Youssef Hammuda and Wael Assaf were killed in Israeli shelling in northern Gaza

Five Palestinians who have not yet been identified were killed in Israeli shelling in northern Gaza Strip.

Medics recovered the body of Hussam Ayman Ayyad, 24, after an attack on his home in Shujaiyyeh.

Muhammad Sami Umran, 26, was killed in Israeli shelling in the city of Khan Younis.

Manal Muhammad al-Astal, 45, was also killed.

Medics pulled the body of a child named Jana al-Muqataa out from under the rubble of her house that was targeted by Israeli warplanes in central Gaza Strip.

Sabrin al-Muqataa was killed in an airstrike targeting her house in central Gaza.

Ahmad al-Bulbul was killed in an airstrike that targeted Bulbul family house in eastern Gaza City.

Fathiya Nadi Muammar, 70, was killed and five were injured in airstrikes that targeted the Muammar family house in eastern Rafah.

Rescue teams managed to pull three dead bodies from rubble in al-Qarara east of Khan Younis. Medical sources identified two of the victims as 29-year-old Hasan Khalil Salh Abu Jamous, Muhammad Farid al-Astal. The third body is yet to be identified.

Furthermore, medical sources in Gaza announced the death of Muhammad Abdul-Raoof al-Dada in the Zaytoun neighborhood.

Separately, rescue teams pulled bodies of Mahmoud al-Abadlah and Nour al-Abadla in al-Qarara.

Israeli Forces Bomb al-Wafa Hospital In Gaza City

Israeli warplanes on Wednesday bombed a central Gaza City hospital after the army claimed militants opened fire from the premises, while a UN human rights chief warned that abuses by Hamas did not justify possible war crimes by Israel.

The Israeli military said in a statement that they had "targeted specific sites" in the al-Wafa rehabilitation hospital compound "in light of several occasions in which fire was opened" and "despite repeated warnings against such activities."

The military last bombed the hospital on Thursday, forcing doctors and patients -- 14 of whom were paralyzed or in a coma -- to flee the premises.

The Israeli military has repeatedly claimed hospitals are being used as launching grounds for Palestinian militants, giving those inside only minutes to flee before subjecting them to bombing raids and shelling.

On Monday, Israeli shells left four dead and wounded 60 at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al Balah.

The military said that on Wednesday warnings were also given for civilians to vacate the hospital, adding that "warnings have been conveyed directly to the hospital administration and other Palestinian officials."

"The hospital grounds and its immediate surroundings have been repeatedly utilized by Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad as a command center, rocket launching site, and a post" for militants to fire at soldiers, the military added.

Reports in the Israeli media indicated around 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday that Israel had given warning to Gaza's main hospital al-Shifa of an impending strike, but an Israeli army spokeswoman contacted by Ma'an denied the claims.

The bombing comes on the 16th day of the Israeli offensive on Gaza, which has left more than 650 Palestinians dead, more than 4,000 injured, and more than 135,000 displaced in the coastal enclave of 1.7 million people.

The assault has left hospitals overflowing with injured amid a severe lack of medical supplies caused by the seven-year long siege of the Gaza Strip by Israel.

The attacks have also raised alarm around the world, as more than 50 mosques have been bombed as well as thousands of homes.

Israel's military actions in the Gaza Strip could amount to war crimes, UN rights chief Navi Pillay said Wednesday.

"There seems to be a strong possibility that international law has been violated, in a manner that could amount to war crimes," Pillay told an emergency session on Israel's Gaza offensive at the UN Human Rights Council, citing attacks that have killed Palestinian civilians, including children.

Pillay added that the firing of rockets from Gaza into Israeli civilian areas does not justify war crimes on the Israeli side.

She also said Israeli children and other civilians also had a right to live without constant fear of rocket attacks.

"Once again, the principles of distinction and precaution are clearly not being observed during such indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas by Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups," she said.

The 46-nation council -- which is the United Nations' top human rights forum -- was poised to call for an international inquiry into Israel's offensive in the Palestinian territories.

The meeting was called by Arab and fellow Muslim-majority nations.

It was set to vote on a resolution lodged by Palestine -- which has observer status at the UN -- condemning "the widespread, systematic and gross violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms" since Israel launched its crackdown last month to stem rocket attacks by Palestinian militants.

The resolution also called on the international community to "urgently dispatch an independent, international commission of inquiry" tasked with probing "all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip."

The aim, it said, was to "establish the facts and circumstances of such violations and of the crimes perpetrated and to identify those responsible, to make recommendations, in particular, on accountability measures, all with a view to avoiding and ending impunity and ensuring that those responsible are held accountable, and on ways and means to protect civilians against any further assaults."

It also called for the "immediate International Protection for the Palestinian people" and requested that Switzerland, as guardian of the Geneva Conventions governing conduct in warfare, organize an urgent conference on the situation in the region.

The Gaza offensive, which marks the worst Israeli assault on Gaza since two attacks in 2008-9 and 2012, has already claimed the lives of 650 Palestinians, most of them civilians, and 31 Israelis, all but two of whom were soldiers.

"The right of the Palestinian people to resist occupation cannot justify the launching of thousands of rockets and mortars directed against Israeli civilians," the UN's rights monitor for the region, Makarim Wibisono, told the session.

"Rockets attacks cannot justify the disproportionate use by Israel of air, sea and ground firepower against targets, including tunnels and rocket launchers, amidst a population of 1.7 million people trapped in one of the most densely populated areas of the world," he added.