[8/5/14] (CNN) -- Withdrawing its ground forces from Gaza Tuesday for a three-day cease-fire with Hamas, Israel announced that its central goal was achieved.
"Mission accomplished," the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Twitter. "We have dismantled the underground terror network built by Hamas to infiltrate and attack Israel." The military said 32 tunnels were destroyed in the four-week conflict.
The declaration came amid suspicions on both sides over whether the 72-hour humanitarian cease-fire will hold.
Nearly 1,900 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza during the conflict, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. It's unclear how many were militants. The United Nations estimates that about 70% of the dead were civilians. But the IDF says about 900 militants were killed. It did not provide a breakdown of the victims by age or gender.
Israeli officials have said 64 Israeli soldiers and three civilians in Israel have died.
Israel is implementing the Egyptian-brokered truce, which took effect Tuesday morning, while maintaining "defensive positions" outside Gaza, the IDF said.
[8/4/14] Washington (AFP) - The United States lashed out at the "disgraceful" shelling of a United Nations school packed with refugees in Gaza on Sunday, demanding Israel do more to avoid civilian casualties.
In one of the most strongly-worded statements yet from Washington since the conflict began nearly a month ago, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the United States was "appalled" by the attack on the school in Rafah.
At least 10 people were killed in the shelling, the third time in 10 days that a UN school has been hit in fighting amid growing international outrage over the civilian death toll in the nearly month-old conflict.
Thousands of Palestinians had sought refuge at the school from fierce fighting between Israeli forces and the Palestinian enclave's Islamist rulers Hamas.
"The United States is appalled by today’s disgraceful shelling outside an UNRWA school in Rafah sheltering some 3,000 displaced persons, in which at least 10 more Palestinian civilians were tragically killed," Psaki said in a statement.
"We once again stress that Israel must do more to meet its own standards and avoid civilian casualties."
[7/20/14] GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - At least 40 Palestinians were killed on Sunday by Israeli shelling in a Gaza neighborhood, where bodies were strewn in the street and thousands fled toward a hospital packed with wounded, witnesses and health officials said.
"Mission accomplished," the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Twitter. "We have dismantled the underground terror network built by Hamas to infiltrate and attack Israel." The military said 32 tunnels were destroyed in the four-week conflict.
The declaration came amid suspicions on both sides over whether the 72-hour humanitarian cease-fire will hold.
Nearly 1,900 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza during the conflict, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. It's unclear how many were militants. The United Nations estimates that about 70% of the dead were civilians. But the IDF says about 900 militants were killed. It did not provide a breakdown of the victims by age or gender.
Israeli officials have said 64 Israeli soldiers and three civilians in Israel have died.
Israel is implementing the Egyptian-brokered truce, which took effect Tuesday morning, while maintaining "defensive positions" outside Gaza, the IDF said.
[8/4/14] Washington (AFP) - The United States lashed out at the "disgraceful" shelling of a United Nations school packed with refugees in Gaza on Sunday, demanding Israel do more to avoid civilian casualties.
In one of the most strongly-worded statements yet from Washington since the conflict began nearly a month ago, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the United States was "appalled" by the attack on the school in Rafah.
At least 10 people were killed in the shelling, the third time in 10 days that a UN school has been hit in fighting amid growing international outrage over the civilian death toll in the nearly month-old conflict.
Thousands of Palestinians had sought refuge at the school from fierce fighting between Israeli forces and the Palestinian enclave's Islamist rulers Hamas.
"The United States is appalled by today’s disgraceful shelling outside an UNRWA school in Rafah sheltering some 3,000 displaced persons, in which at least 10 more Palestinian civilians were tragically killed," Psaki said in a statement.
"We once again stress that Israel must do more to meet its own standards and avoid civilian casualties."
[7/20/14] GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - At least 40 Palestinians were killed on Sunday by Israeli shelling in a Gaza neighborhood, where bodies were strewn in the street and thousands fled toward a hospital packed with wounded, witnesses and health officials said.
The mass casualties in the Shejaia district in northeast Gaza were the heaviest since Israel launched its offensive on the Palestinian territory on July 8 after cross-border rocket strikes by militants intensified.
Anguished cries of "Did you see Ahmed?" "Did you see my wife?" echoed through the courtyard of Gaza's Shifa hospital, where panicked residents of Shejaia gathered in family groups, while inside bodies and wounded lay on blood-stained floors.
Video given to Reuters by a local showed at least a dozen mangled corpses, including three children, lying in the rubble-filled streets.
At the hospital, about 3 km (2 miles away), elderly men said the Israeli attack was the fiercest they had seen since the 1967 Middle East war, when Israel captured Gaza.
"Forty martyrs have been counted so far ... medics are searching for possibly more casualties," Naser Tattar, Shifa hospital's director, told Reuters. He said some 400 people were wounded in the Israeli attack.
Thousands fled Shejaia, some by foot and others piling into the backs of trucks and sitting on the hoods of cars filled with families trying to get away.
Asked about the attack, an Israeli military spokeswoman said: "Two days ago, residents of Shejaia received recorded messages to evacuate the area in order to protect their lives."
There were no signs of a diplomatic breakthrough toward a ceasefire, and militants kept up their rocket fire on Israel. Sirens sounded in southern Israeli towns and in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. There were no reports of casualties.
Hamas, the dominant armed group in the Gaza Strip, had urged people across the territory not to heed the Israeli warnings and abandon their homes.
As the tank shells began to land, Shejaia residents called radio stations pleading for evacuation. An air strike on the Shejaia home of Khalil al-Hayya, a senior Hamas official, killed his son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren, hospital officials said.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned "the new massacre committed by the Israeli government in Shejaia", a spokesman for the Western-backed leader said.
Israel, which has accused Hamas of using civilians as human shields by launching rockets from residential areas, sent ground forces into the Gaza Strip on Thursday after 10 days of air, naval and artillery barrages failed to stop the salvoes.
The military said it beefed up its presence on Sunday, with a focus on destroying missile stockpiles and a vast tunnel system Hamas built along the frontier that crosses into Israel.
Gaza's Health Ministry officials said at least 370 Palestinians, many of them civilians, have been killed in the 13-day conflict and about 2,600 have been wounded. On Israel's side, two civilians were killed by cross-border fire and five soldiers died as fighting occurred at close quarters.
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