Israeli airstrikes targeting Hamas in Gaza hit a mosque and a centre for the disabled where two women were killed Saturday, raising the Palestinian death toll from the offensive to more than 125.
The Israeli military said the mosque concealed rockets like those used in the barrage of nearly 700 fired by Gaza militants at Israel over the five-day offensive, while saying it was investigating claims about the other sites hit, AP reported.
However, the strikes in the densely populated Gaza Strip show the challenge facing Israel as it considers a ground operation in the region and potential further dangers posed to civilians.
Two were killed in a strike that hit a charitable association for the disabled in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, while three others died in a second attack in western Gaza City, local health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said.
The deaths of eight more people announced in the early hours of Saturday included one man who died of wounds sustained in an earlier strike.
The othere were five people killed in a strike in Jebaliya, in the northern Gaza Strip, and two further south in Deir el Balah, Qudra said.
Local officials said the morning’s raids hit targets that included mosques and homes of Hamas officials, throughout the coastal enclave.
The latest fatalities raise the death toll to 118 since Israel began Operation Protective Edge early Tuesday in an attempt to halt cross-border rocket fire by militant groups.
Since then, militants have fired approximately 520 mortar rounds and rockets that struck Israel, while another 140 rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defence system, an Israeli army statement said late Friday.
It is the deadliest violence since November 2012, with a growing number of rockets fired at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and even as far north as Haifa.
So far, no Israelis have been killed.
Facing a possible Israeli ground invasion, militants warned international airlines they would fire rockets at Tel Aviv’s main airport.
A rocket also caused the first serious Israeli casualty when a fuel tanker was hit at a service station in Ashdod, 30km north of Gaza.
Israel’s military commander, Lt Gen Benny Gantz, said his forces were ready to act when needed – an indication of a readiness to send in tanks and other ground troops, as Israel last did for two weeks in early 2009.
“We are in the midst of an assault, and we are prepared to expand it as much as it is required, to wherever is required, with whatever force will be required and for as long as it will be required,” Gantz told reporters.
US President Barack Obama told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over telephone on Thursday that the US was willing to help negotiate a ceasefire, the White House said.
A spokeswoman for US Secretary of State John Kerry said: “Nobody wants to see a ground invasion.”
However, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urged the UN Security Council yesterday to order an immediate truce.
But Israel said it was determined to end cross-border rocket attacks which intensified last month after its forces arrested hundreds of activists from the Islamist Hamas movement in the occupied West Bank.
The arrest followed the abduction of three Jewish teenagers who were later found killed. A Palestinian youth was killed in Jerusalem in a suspected Israeli revenge attack.
Western-backed Abbas, who is based in the West Bank and agreed a power-sharing deal with Gaza’s dominant Hamas in April after years of feud, called for international help.
“The Palestinian leadership urges the Security Council to quickly issue a clear condemnation of this Israeli aggression and impose a commitment of a mutual ceasefire immediately,” he said.
After the failure of the latest US-brokered peace talks with Israel, Abbas’s accord with Hamas angered Israel.
The rocket salvoes by the hardline movement and its allies have killed no one so far, due in part to an interception by Israel’s partly-US funded Iron Dome aerial defence system, which shot down at least 110 incoming rockets.
But racing for shelter has become a routine for hundreds of thousands of Israelis, and their leaders have hinted they could order troops into the Gaza Strip, home to nearly 20 lakh people. Some 30,000 reservists have already been mobilised, the army says.
Hamas’s armed wing said it would fire rockets at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion international airport and warned airlines not to fly to Israel’s main gateway to the world.
“The armed wing of Hamas has decided to respond to the Israeli aggression, and we warn you against carrying out flights to Ben-Gurion airport, which will be one of our targets today because it also hosts a military air base,” said a statement by Hamas’s Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades.
The airport is within an area covered by Iron Dome.
An air strike on a house in the city of Gaza killed a man described by Palestinian officials as a doctor and pharmacist. Medics and residents said an aircraft also bombed a three-storey house in the southern town of Rafah, killing five people.
Netanyahu told Israelis in a televised statement on Thursday: “So far the battle is progressing as planned, but we can expect further stages in future. Up until now, we have hit Hamas and the terror organisations hard, and as the battle continues, we will increase strikes at them.”
Lebanese rockets
In northern Israel, rocket fire struck near the Lebanese border and the military responded with artillery fire toward the source in southern Lebanon, military spokesman Lt Col Peter Lerner said.
The Lebanese military said militants there fired three rockets toward Israel around 6am, local time, and the Israelis retaliated by firing about 25 artillery shells on the area.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said that one of the militants firing the rockets was wounded and rushed to a hospital. The Lebanese military said troops found two rocket launchers and dismantled them.
