Rockets strike Israel during humanitarian cease-fire
Rockets fired from the Gaza Strip struck southern Israel two hours after a humanitarian cease-fire went into effect.
Rockets fired from the Gaza Strip struck southern Israel two hours after a humanitarian cease-fire went into effect.
Israeli shelling killed four boys on a Gaza beach on Wednesday, a local health official said, and Palestinian militants fired a further 70 rockets into Israel after a failed Egyptian attempt to halt more than a week of warfare.
The Israeli military agreed to a humanitarian cease-fire to allow civilians in Gaza to resupply their households with basic necessities.
Israel’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, said Israel should retake the Gaza Strip in the current military operation.
Sitting on a leather sofa in flip-flops and shorts, smoking and eating snacks, a group of middle-aged Israeli men look like they are watching a soccer match on TV, but they are perched atop a hill overlooking the Gaza Strip watching a very different kind of contest.
Standing in a well-furnished bomb-shelter in the southern town of Sderot, former deputy Israeli army chief-of-staff Uzi Dayan says that a large-scale ground invasion of the Gaza Strip is the only way to ensure that Israel completes its mission of ending rocket fire once and for all while striking a heavy blow to the Islamist Hamas movement.
Hamas leaders called on Palestinians living in the northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes and ignore Israeli warnings of an impending military operation.
At least 20 people were killed across Gaza on Tuesday, Palestinian officials said, by a bombardment Israel said may be just the start of a lengthy offensive against Islamist militants whose rockets reached hit unprecedented depths of its interior.
Israeli soldiers killed four Palestinian gunmen who slipped into southern Israel by sea from the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, the army said.