Hamas militants infiltrate Israel through tunnels as Gaza death toll tops 500

Written By Unknown on Senin, 21 Juli 2014 | 21.48

Israeli forces killed at least 10 Palestinian militants on Monday after they crossed the border from Gaza through two tunnels, the military said, as the death toll from the two-week conflict passed 500.

"The tank fire and the artillery fire is near constant," CBC News correspondent Paul Hunter reported from Erez, Israel, near the northern border with Gaza. Erez is where the tunnels Hamas was using exited into Israel.

There were also unconfirmed reports that an Israeli soldier had been captured and held by Hamas.

The Israeli barrage killed 25 people from one family near Gaza's southern border with Egypt, while 10 from another died in the nearby Khan Younis after shells hit their home and struck again as they tried to flee, hospital officials said.

The overnight raids lifted the Palestinian death toll to 502, mostly civilians, since fighting started on July 8. Israel says 18 of its soldiers have also died along with two civilians.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry were headed to Cairo Monday for the highest-level attempt yet to end two weeks of Israel-Hamas fighting. Egypt has been acting as host to negotiators trying to end the fighting.

In New York, the Security Council called for a truce after an emergency meeting on Sunday. The 15-member Council "expressed serious concern about the growing number of casualties (and) ... called for an immediate cessation of hostilities," Rwanda's UN ambassador Eugene Gasana told reporters.

Israel Gaza conflict

Sunday saw more than 70 Palestinians killed and 13 Israeli soldiers in the fiercest battle to date in Israel's ongoing ground offensive in Gaza. (Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters)

Two groups of Palestinian fighters slipped into southern Israel in the early morning, with the Israeli army ordering a lockdown in local communities as they tracked them down.

Aircraft targeted one of the squads and soldiers opened fire on the other, killing at least 10 militants, a military spokeswoman said. The military had no immediate comment on media reports of casualties among Israeli forces.

Fighters from the Hamas Islamist group, which runs Gaza, and its allies, have repeatedly tried to enter Israel over the past week through a vast network of hidden tunnels, looking to attack villages and army encampments that dot the border area.

Hamas announced late on Sunday its fighters had captured an Israeli soldier during fighting, setting off celebrations around Gaza. It named the man as Shaul Aron and showed his ID papers, but did not release any picture of him alive in their hands.

 Israel's ambassador to the United Nations denied the claim, and the Israel's military said it was still investigating.

CBC's Sasa Petricic said the soldier's name "was similar to a soldier that was killed earlier in the day yesterday, so most people kind of dismissed this as just propaganda by Hamas."

Lerner told reporters that the main focus of fighting remained the Shijaiyah district, east of Gaza City, where some 72 Palestinians, many of them civilians, were killed in fierce shelling on Sunday.

In its push against militants in Shijaiyah, Israel also suffered its worst losses in the offensive, with 13 soldiers killed — the army's heaviest one-day loss in battle since 2006.

Earlier on Sunday, Kerry had said he supported Israel's efforts to destroy tunnels it says Gaza militants use for infiltration attempts and to hide weapons.

Lerner said that since start of Israeli ground operations, the army had uncovered 43 access points to 16 different tunnels.

Egypt, Qatar, France have also been pushing, with little sign of progress, for a permanent ceasefire.


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