Gaza conflict: ‘Our house was shaking’

The death toll climbed on Saturday as Israel continued its incursion into the Gaza Strip.

Part of an Israeli tank shell is seen still stuck in the wall after it slammed into a home and killed one-year-old Rezak Al Alek in the Tufa neighborhood of central Gaza on July 19,2014 . The baby wasShow more

BEIT LAHIYA // Two Israeli soldiers were killed in a cross-border attack by Gaza militants on Saturday as the Palestinian death toll from attacks by Israeli warplanes and ground troops in the besieged territory passed 340 on the 12th day of fighting.

The two soldiers were killed when the Palestinian fighters from the Hamas-run enclave entered Israel’s Eshkol region by tunnel and attacked an army patrol with automatic weapons and an anti-tank missile, the Israeli military said.

It said the attack was met by air strikes and ground pursuit, killing one of the militants on Israeli territory before the others escaped into Gaza.

Israel launched a ground incursion into the territory on Thursday evening that has included heavy clashes with Palestinian fighters and intensified airstrikes, shelling and helicopter attacks that have killed mostly civilians.

Israel’s military said its tough response was to stop militant rocket fire and destroy a network of tunnels built by Hamas that are used to launch such weapons as well as sneak into Israel.

“We have struck hard on the two main strategic assets of Hamas: the rockets and these tunnels,” said the Israeli military spokesman, Lt Col Peter Lerner.

He said Israeli forces destroyed 13 tunnels, some as deep as 30 metres, during the first 24 hours of the incursion, and had struck 2,350 targets, including 1,100 rocket launchers, since the assault on Gaza began on July 8.

More than 1,600 rockets have been fired at Israel since then, according to the Israeli military.

The rockets have reached deep inside Israel, and on Saturday killed a Bedouin man and wounded four other people near the city of Dimona, the site of Israel’s undeclared nuclear weapons programme.

Fierce bombardment and attacks by Israel sent scores of wounded people to the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahiya, a city in northern Gaza that is close to the area where Israeli soldiers are battling Palestinian fighters.

Ambulances raced into the facility’s entrance, shuttling in wounded and those killed from shelling and air strikes. Family members crowded the emergency room area, which filled with the elderly, children and mothers.

The mother of Mohammed Al Rahel wailed in the emergency room after being told her young son, who was crushed in the debris after an air raid destroyed their home, was dead.

Emergency responders had wheeled her son into the hospital, apparently unconscious if not already dead, just moments earlier.

“Oh, Mohammed! Oh, God! Why?” Rehab Al Rahel cried as relatives tried to calm her.

Family members said Mohammed was four, although Arabic news reports said he was seven.

Their home in a northern area of Beit Lahiya was struck about an hour earlier, burying at least four family members and killing a cousin, also named Mohammed, who was 28.

Yahia Kahlout, the emergency room head nurse, said scores of men, women and children had been brought in since Israel’s escalation of attacks in the area, many of them suffering from shrapnel wounds.

“The fragments are hitting the adults in the torso and the hips and hitting the kids in the head,” he said.

Meanwhile, a funeral was held in the area for eight members of the Abu Jarad family. A shell struck their home in the nearby town of Beit Hanoun on Friday evening, killing adults and children.

The fighting has displaced 50,000 Palestinians who have taken refuge in United Nations facilities, while the World Food programme said it was preparing to feed 85,000 people.

Umm Nour Aradhea’a, 30, said she fled the northern village of Atatra after escalating barrages of tank fire from Israel’s border, taking refuge on Friday morning with her six children at the UN-run Al Fakhoura school near the Jabalia refugee camp.

“You could see the tank lights. They were shooting and shooting. Our house was shaking,” she said at the school, which was full people who also fled the area.

As she spoke, the thuds of israeli shelling could be heard in the backround. Militants also fired rockets not far from the facility.

The huge flow of internally placed people and effect of fighting has badly damaged Gaza’s already frail economy. Before the flare-up that began on July 8 suffered, Gaza suffered from an Egyptian-backed Israeli siege.

Hamas officials demand, among other things, that the siege be lifted as a condition for any ceasefire.

“There will be no truce without an end to the war that the Occupation [Israel] began, a lifting of the blockade and a halt to all violations and killings in Gaza and the West Bank,” Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for the Islamist group said on Saturday.

Power outages across the territory are worsening, and those taking shelter in UN schools complain of overcrowding and unsanitary conditions, including a washroom overflowing with excrement.

“There’s too many of us here,” said Adel Attar, 40, who fled to the Rimal Preparatory school with his six children a week ago. He too was from Atatra, where he farmed tomatoes and peppers.

Others are simply running out of money, such as Omar Obeid, 21, owner of a fruit and vegetable shop on the southern outskirts of Beit Lahiya. Unable to pay cash, neighbours have run up bills of more than Dh21,000 over the past few days, while much of his producing is spoiling because his refrigerator only receives power six hours a day.

“I hope they pay me back, but this is Gaza, so I would understand if they never did. Things are only getting worse,” said Mr Obeid.

* Additional reporting by Reuters and Associated Press