GAZA: Israel's military pounded targets in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country should prepare for a long conflict in the Palestinian enclave, squashing any hopes of a swift end to 22 days of fighting.
Palestinians reported heavy Israeli bombing in Gaza City.
Israeli aircraft fired a missile at the house of Hamas Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh and flattened it before dawn, causing damage but no casualties, Gaza's interior ministry said.
At least 30 people were killed in Israeli assaults from air land and sea, residents said, in the most widespread night of attacks so far in the coastal enclave.
The Israeli military said five soldiers were killed in a battle with militants who crossed into Israel via a tunnel near the community of Nahal Oz, close to the Gaza border.
Hamas said that its broadcast outlets, Al-Aqsa TV and Al-Aqsa Radio, were also targeted. The television station continued to broadcast, but the radio station went silent.
Residents said that 20 houses were destroyed during the night and two mosques were hit.
As night fell, army flares illuminated the sky and the sound of intense shelling was heard. The military warned thousands of Palestinians to flee their homes around Gaza City — usually the prelude to major army strikes.
“We need to be prepared for a lengthy campaign. We will continue to act with force and discretion until our mission is accomplished,” Netanyahu said.
“His threats do not frighten either Hamas or the Palestinian people, and the (Israeli) occupation will pay the price for its massacres against children and civilians,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told
Bloodshed in and around Gaza surged Tuesday with strikes killing 13 Palestinians,, shattering hopes for an end to three weeks of violence.
It was a bloody start to the three-day Muslim holiday of Eidul-Fitr, with international demands for an end to the fighting falling on increasingly deaf ears.
“In the name of humanity, the violence must stop,” pleaded UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon after holding long talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, urging him to “stop the violence” and heed international calls for a ceasefire.
But Netanyahu appeared determined to press the offensive.
“We must be prepared for a lengthy campaign,” he said in a live broadcast after a mortar attack killed four people in southern Israel, and troops fought a gun battle with Palestinian militants who sneaked across the border.
As he spoke, the military sent messages to thousands of Palestinians in Shejaiya, Zeitun, Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanun, urging them to flee their homes and seek shelter in central Gaza City as troops prepared to step up their 21-day campaign.
Shortly afterwards, the cloudy skies over Gaza lit up with flashes as the army began an intensive wave of air strikes and heavy shelling across the strip that continued early Tuesday, AFP correspondents and medics said.
Ten people were killed in the first wave of strikes, among them three children who died with two adults when a shell hit a house in the northern town of Jabaliya, emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said.
Another five died in a strike on Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, taking to at least 29 the number of killed on Monday.
Early Tuesday, seven Palestinians died in an Israeli bombardment of the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip and another six were killed in the Bureij refugee camp, taking to almost 1,100 the number of Palestinians who have died since the start of Israeli military operations.
The seven, including five women and one child, died when their three-storey building was destroyed, said the spokesman for Gaza rescue services.
Among the other six were three children and two women. Fifteen people were also wounded.
On the Israeli side, 53 soldiers have been killed in the fighting, as well as three civilians .
The main UN agency in Gaza, UNRWA, said more than 167,000 displaced Palestinians had taken shelter in its schools and buildings, following calls by Israel for civilians to evacuate whole neighbourhoods ahead of military operations.
Calm before the storm
Monday had started with a deceptive air of calm in and around Gaza following a quiet second night in which both sides appeared to be observing an undeclared ceasefire.
Despite the lull, there was little mood for celebration in Gaza City as the three-day Eid holiday got under way, with families quickly leaving the mosque after prayers to head straight home or to pay their respects to the dead.
“This is the Eid of the martyrs,” said Ahed Shamali mourning the death of his 16-year-old son.
But tensions rose sharply after medics said a shell had struck a building inside the Shifa hospital compound in Gaza City, which was quickly followed by reports of a blast hitting a children's playground in a beachside refugee camp, which left 10 dead, eight of them children.
The Israeli army categorically denied it had fired at either the hospital or the camp.
Residents in the Shati camp said an F-16 firing several missiles at a motorised rickshaw, with medics confirming 10 dead with another 46 injured, including many children.
Near the site of the blast, women wailed and men screamed in anguish in scenes of utter confusion and distress, an AFP correspondent said.
But the army denied any involvement, blaming errant rocket fire by Palestinian militants.
“We have not fired on the hospital or on Shati refugee camp,” Major Arye Shalicar told AFP, saying the only drones used near Shifa were not equipped with missiles.
As the violence soared, top diplomats from Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the United States pledged to step up the pressure to force the sides to accept a truce, with a statement from the French presidency saying they had “agreed to redouble their efforts to obtain a ceasefire.
“Pressure must increase to get there,” it said.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said any lasting truce must ensure the disarmament of Hamas and other militant groups, with parties working together on the basis of an Egyptian ceasefire initiative.
And Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas was expected to visit Cairo with representatives of Hamas and Islamic Jihad for fresh talks with the Egyptians on ending the violence in Gaza, a senior source in Ramallah told AFP.
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