Palestinians flee as Israel plans all-out offensive against Hamas
At least 119 killed, including 31 children and 19 women, while clashes continue
GAZA CITY, GAZA STRIP: Palestinian families grabbed their children and belongings and fled neighbourhoods on the outskirts of Gaza City on Friday as Israel unleashed heavy artillery fire at what it said was a large network of militant tunnels ahead of a possible ground invasion.
Israel has massed troops along the border and called up 9,000 reservists as fighting intensifies with the Islamic militant group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian militants have fired some 1,800 rockets, and the Israeli military has launched more than 600 airstrikes, toppling at least three high-rise apartment buildings, and has shelled some areas with tanks stationed near the frontier.
As Israel and Hamas plunged closer to all-out war despite international efforts at a ceasefire, communal violence in Israel erupted for a fourth night. Jewish and Arab mobs clashed in the flashpoint town of Lod, even after Israel dispatched additional security forces.
The Gaza health ministry says the toll from the fighting has risen to 119 killed, including 31 children and 19 women, with 830 wounded. The Hamas and Islamic Jihad militant groups have confirmed 20 deaths in their ranks, though Israel says that number is much higher. Seven people have been killed in Israel, including a six-year-old boy and a soldier.
Palestinians living outside Gaza City, near the northern and eastern frontiers with Israel, fled the intense artillery bombardment on Friday. Families arrived at the Un-run schools in the city in pick-up trucks, on donkeys and by foot, hauling pillows and pans, blankets and bread.
“We were planning to leave our homes at night, but Israeli jets bombarded us so we had to wait until the morning,” said Hedaia Maarouf, who fled with her extended family of 19 people, including 13 children.
“We were terrified for our children, who were screaming and shaking.”
In the northern Gaza Strip, Rafat Tanani, his pregnant wife and four children were killed after an Israeli warplane reduced a building to rubble, residents said.
“It was a massacre,” said Sadallah Tanani, a relative. “My
feelings are indescribable.”
US ignoring Palestinians’ plight, accuses China
China on Friday accused the United States of “ignoring the suffering” of Muslims, after Washington blocked a scheduled UN Security Council meeting aimed at addressing an intensifying conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters the US had single handedly obstructed the Security Council from speaking out on the crisis, “standing on the opposite side of the international community”.
“What we can feel is that the
US keeps saying that it cares about the human rights of Muslims... but it was ignoring the suffering of the Palestinian people,” Hua added.
She contrasted America’s reluctance at the Security Council with calls by the US, Britain and Germany for China to end repression of its Uighur Muslim minority - an incendiary issue in Us-china relations.
‘Reconsider’ travel to Israel, US tells citizens
The US state department on Thursday urged citizens to “reconsider travel to Israel” due to the recent surge in violence between the Jewish state and Palestinians.