Israeli fighter jets pound Gaza Strip
Israeli fighter jets pounded the Gaza Strip overnight, killing 10 members of a single family, medics said.
GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Israeli fighter jets pounded the Gaza Strip overnight, killing 10 members of a single family, medics said Saturday, after a day of deadly violence rocked the West Bank and a US envoy arrived for talks.
US Secretary for IsraelPalestinian Affairs Hady Amr was due to meet Israeli leaders in Jerusalem Saturday before heading to the occupied West Bank for talks with Palestinian officials.
He wants to encourage a “sustainable calm”,
State Department deputy spokeswoman Jalina Porter said.
Washington has been criticised for not doing more to end the intensifying violence after it blocked a UN Security Council meeting scheduled for Friday.
Eleven Palestinians were killed in clashes in the occupied West Bank on Friday and there were fears of worse violence Saturday as Palestinians commemorate the Nakba, the “catastrophe” of Israel’s creation in 1948, which turned hundreds of thousands into refugees.
Despite intensifying diplomatic efforts to ease five days of fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza, Israel’s air force struck several sites in the coastal enclave overnight, while rockets again tore towards Israel.
Ten members of a single family – eight children and two women – were killed when a three-storey building in Shati refugee camp collapsed following an Israel strike.
The overall death toll in Gaza since Monday now tops 130, more than 30 of them children. Around 950 people have been wounded. Israel, which is also trying to contain an outbreak of internal Jewish-Arab violence, is facing its bloodiest conflict with Palestinian militants in Gaza since a 2014 war.
Its bombardment began on Monday after the territory’s Islamist rulers Hamas fired rockets towards Jerusalem in response to a bloody Israeli police action at the flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound in annexed east Jerusalem.
More than 2,000 rockets have been fired at Israel since then, killing nine people, including a child and a soldier. More than 560 people have been wounded.
Between 7pm Friday and 7am Saturday, some 200 rockets were fired at southern Israel, over 100 of which were intercepted by air defences, the Israeli military said.
Israel’s response has seen it hit nearly 800 targets, including a massive assault Friday on a Hamas tunnel network dug under civilian areas.
Some 10,000 Palestinians have fled homes near the Israeli border for fear of a ground offensive, the United Nations said.