Israel attacks Gaza sites after warning
After offering notice that thousands in the Gaza Strip should flee, Israel unleashes an aerial bombing.
JERUSALEM — Prompting thousands to flee, Israel warned some residents of the crowded Gaza Strip to leave their homes Sunday and then unleashed an aerial bombardment of sites it says are used by Islamic militants to launch rockets at major Israeli population centers.
About 17,000 people from the Beit Lahiya area in the northern Gaza Strip streamed for protection into United Nations-run facilities. Israeli warplanes hammered the vacated area Sunday afternoon and evening, hitting alleged launch sites and homes of members of extremist groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The assault was carried out mostly by air, but the Israeli navy also reportedly fired shells from the sea.
Despite the concentrated attack, militants continued to fire rockets at a broad swath of Israel, setting off warning sirens in Tel Aviv and the coastal city of Haifa.
In Gaza, the death toll rose to at least 167, fueling international alarm over the lopsided casualty count. The U.N. says the majority of the victims have been civilians.
Seventeen members of one extended family were killed late Saturday when a home and nearby mosque were hit. More than 1,000 people have been injured.
No Israelis have been killed by the rocket strikes.
Neither side appeared to pay any heed to a unanimous statement from the U.N. Security Council calling for the fighting to stop.
In a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry reiterated Washington’s offer to help broker a return to the cease-fire that ended the last confrontation between Hamas and Israel in 2012, a senior State Department official said. No sign of end
Netanyahu insists that no external pressure will deter Israel from continuing its offensive for as long as it deems necessary.
“We don’t know when the operation will end. It could take much longer,” Netanyahu said before a Cabinet meeting Sunday, adding that Israel would continue to act “in apatient and level-headed manner” until it achieved its goal of restoring quiet.
Israeli troops have begun massing along the border with Gaza for a possible land incursion. The gov- ernment has completed its call-up of 40,000reservists to bolster its regular forces, the military said.
In the first report of Israeli boots on the ground in Gaza, military officials confirmed a lightning raid overnight Saturday by naval commandos who crossed the border to take out a site believed to be the source of large volleys of rockets launched at cities in southern and central Israel.
The commandos went in under aerial and naval cover and reportedly killed three Palestinian militants in a shootout. Four commandos were lightly wounded, the military said. Warned via leaflet
Fears of an imminent large-scale ground invasion of Gaza rose when Israeli forces dropped leaflets on Beit Lahiya on Sunday morning telling residents to evacuate by noon to avoid being hurt in a short, temporary but hardhitting military campaign in the area. Warnings also were delivered by phone.
Shortly after the noon deadline expired, Israeli warplanes hammered homes of suspected militants in Beit Lahiya in a rapid succession of strikes. More were carried out in the evening.
Thousands sought refuge in a school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Chris Gunness, a spokesman for the agency, urged all sides to respect the status of U.N. installations.
The Egyptian government said it would open its crossing into Gaza for U.S. citizens to leave the enclave Monday.
A group of Egyptian political parties called on the government in Cairo to open the crossing indefinitely to help Gazans who have relied on it for supplies to get through. The transit point has been closed since last summer, after the installation of a government in Cairo hostile to Hamas.