UN chief heads to Mideast as Gaza toll soars

Israel pounded Gaza from the air on Saturday as troops also pressed a ground assault, sending the Palestinian death toll soaring to 337 as the UN chief headed for the region in a bid to broker a ceasefire.

Palestinians prepare the graves for eight members from Abu Jarad family, including three children, who were killed by an Israeli tank shell. -Reuters

As world diplomats frantically sought ways to end 12 days of bloodshed in and around Gaza, Israel warned it was ready to intensify a ground operation to destroy a network of cross-border tunnels used by militants to infiltrate the Israeli south.

US President Barack Obama urged Israel to do everything necessary to curb the high civilian death toll, saying Washington was “deeply concerned about the risks of further escalation”.

But even as the operation gathered force, Palestinian commandos succeeded in infiltrating Israel, sparking a deadly skirmish with an army patrol, which ended with a militant dead and two soldiers wounded, as Gaza’s bloodiest conflict since 2009 showed no signs of letting up.

And Israel’s Chief-of-Staff, Lieutenant General Benny Gantz, said the army was “expanding the ground phase of the operation”, warning there would be “moments of hardship”, alluding to the possibility of further Israeli casualties.

During the infiltration, several militants managed to reach southern Israel through an underground tunnel from central Gaza, firing a machine gun and anti-tank missile at an army patrol, wounding two, the army said.

Troops fired back, killing one of them, while the others fled back through the tunnel, with the operation claimed by Hamas’s military wing, the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades.

In a separate incident late on Friday, militants strapped explosives on to a donkey in another attempt to attack troops.

But soldiers spotted the donkey approaching them “suspiciously” and fired at it, causing it to explode, a statement said.

So far, the violence which erupted on July 8 has claimed the lives of 337 Palestinians, and three Israelis, one of whom was killed on Saturday when a rocket hit a Bedouin encampment in southern Israel.

A Bedouin man was killed and four of his family wounded, among them two young children, when a rocket hit their desert campsite not far from Israel’s nuclear reactor in the southern town of Dimona, police said.

In Gaza, after a relative lull on Friday, violence picked up again in the evening, with intensifying tank shelling and air strikes killing more than a dozen people.

And on Saturday, at least 41 people were killed, including two six-year-olds and a toddler, emergency services spokesman Ashraf Al Qudra said.

The increasing number of children killed in the conflict is causing a growing outcry, with a joint statement from the NGOs War Child and Defence for Children International saying more children had been killed than militants.

Figures provided by the UN children’s agency, Unicef, indicate 73 of the victims were under the age of 18.

“Children should be protected from the violence, and they should not be the victims of a conflict for which they have no responsibility,” Unicef’s Catherine Weibel said.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA has so far opened 44 of its schools to shelter those fleeing in the most heavily-bombarded areas.

So far, more than 50,000 Gazans have sought sanctuary at UN institutions, the agency said.

Meanwhile, UN chief Ban Ki-moon was to leave for the region on Saturday to help Israelis and Palestinians “end the violence and find a way forward”, the agency said.

In Cairo, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius also called for an urgent truce.

“The absolute priority is a ceasefire, but it must guarantee a lasting truce,” he said.

In northern Israel, the growing violence brought angry protestors onto the streets, with 1,500 Arab Israelis demonstrating in Kafr Kana against the ongoing military operation, police said.