Three days of Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip left 49 Palestinians dead, including 13 children and three women, while 296 were wounded, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in an update on the casualties.
At least 49 people have been killed in Gaza since violence escalated on Monday, according to the enclave’s health ministry. Six people have been killed in Israel, medical officials said.
A Palestinian source said truce efforts by Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations were continuing but without progress so far. U.N. Middle East peace envoy Tor Wennesland said the United Nations was working with all sides to restore calm.
In Gaza, a multi-storey residential building collapsed after Israel warned its occupants in advance to evacuate, and another was heavily damaged in the air strikes.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said four of the children killed on the first day of the airstrikes were students at its school in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza, and they were two siblings and their cousins.
International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said today that the Israeli escalation of violence against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, could amount to crimes under the Rome Statute.
Israel said its warplanes had targeted and killed several of the Islamist group Hamas’s intelligence leaders. Other strikes hit what the military said were rocket launch sites, Hamas offices and the homes of Hamas leaders.
The heaviest offensive between Israel and Hamas since a 2014 war in the Hamas-ruled enclave has increased international concern that the situation could spiral out of control.
“Israel has gone crazy,” said a man on a Gaza street, where people ran out of their homes as explosions rocked buildings.
Sixteen people were killed in Israeli air strikes on Gaza on Wednesday, Gaza’s health ministry said. Witnesses and health officials in Gaza said one Israeli air strike killed three people, including a woman, in a car.
Many Israelis also spent a sleepless night, with sirens wailing in Tel Aviv, heralding several waves of rocket strikes in Israel’s heartland.
Israelis ran to shelters or lay flat on pavements in communities more than 70 km (45 miles) up the coast from Gaza as interceptor missiles streaked into the sky.
Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz said Israeli forces had attacked “many hundreds of targets” and killed senior militants in Gaza and that “all means and options” remained on the table.
“The Israeli military will continue to attack and will bring about complete and long-term quiet,” Gantz told reporters. “Only when we achieve this goal, can we talk about calming things down. At the moment, there is no end-date.”
Hamas’s armed wing said it fired 210 rockets towards Beersheba and Tel Aviv overnight in response to the strikes on the tower buildings in Gaza City. Israel’s military says about a third of the rockets have fallen short, landing within Gaza.
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