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Israel Strengthens Its Ground Assault in Gaza Israeli Attack in Gaza City Said to Kill at Least 60 Palestinians
(about 3 hours later)
JERUSALEM — The Israeli military said on Sunday that it had expanded its ground activities in Gaza, increasing the number of forces and the areas in which they were operating, as eastern Gaza came under heavy shelling and as resistance from Hamas fighters appeared to intensify. GAZA CITY — At least 60 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire in Shejaiya, a neighborhood of eastern Gaza City, on Sunday, according to Palestinian officials, and Israeli forces met fierce resistance from Palestinian militants armed with anti-tank missiles and automatic weapons.
Amid reports of dozens of Palestinian casualties from Israeli shelling in the Shejaiya district east of Gaza City, the Israeli military said it had agreed to a request from the International Committee of the Red Cross for a two-hour humanitarian cease-fire, rom 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. Sunday, to allow emergency crews in to evacuate the dead and wounded. The fighting signaled that what had begin as a ground invasion by Israel had moved into a costlier phase for both sides.
For the Palestinians it was the deadliest episode since July 8, when Israel began its offensive, first from the air, which is intended to curb rocket fire against its cities. The Gaza health ministry reported that more than 300 people were injured in Shejaiya. Tolls were not available from the refugee camps in central Gaza where fleeing residents reported a similar Israeli advance, with artillery.
A spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Jerusalem said the organization had been coordinating with both sides to gain ambulance access to areas where hostilities were continuing. The Palestinian government, which is led by President Mahmoud Abbas of the Western-supported Palestinian Authority and by Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza, described the killing of Palestinians in Shejaiya in a statement as “a heinous massacre” and a war crime.
The Israeli military said that it would respond with force to any attempt by Palestinian militants to exploit the lull by firing on Israel, and that it had advised residents remaining in Shejaiya to use the humanitarian window to move west. Two Israeli soldiers were killed in combat overnight, according to that country’s military, and a spokesman, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, suggested there would soon be an announcement about more casualties on the Israeli side. Earlier, Hamas’s military wing said it had ambushed an Israeli force after luring it into a minefield.
The military said it had warned civilians in Shejaiya to evacuate days ago but that “Hamas ordered them to stay. Hamas put them in the line of fire.” It also accused Hamas of placing “rockets, tunnels and command centers” in Shejaiya. It was not immediately clear whether the growing death toll and increasing pressure on both sides would help or hinder international efforts to forge a cease-fire. Mr. Abbas was expected to meet on Sunday in Dohar, Qatar, with United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Qatari officials to discuss an Egyptian proposal for ending the fighting, according to Palestinian officials. Khaled Meshal, the political leader of Hamas, is also based in Qatar.
Overnight, the shriek of warplanes could be heard low over the Gaza coast. Farther east, residents said the thump and crack of artillery hardly ceased during the night. The Israeli military said it had agreed to a request from the International Committee of the Red Cross for a two-hour humanitarian cease-fire, from 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. Sunday, to allow emergency crew in to evacuate the dead and wounded from Shejaiya and to allow other residents to leave, but some fighting appeared to have resumed even before the first hour was up. Soon after 3.30 p.m. the Israeli military said it would hold its fire in Shejaiya for an additional hour though it accused Hamas of continuing to shoot. A short while later it said that acceding to a Red Cross request, it was extending the cease-fire until 5:30.
As soon as it was light, masses of Palestinians began fleeing west and north toward the center of Gaza City from the city’s eastern area and Shejaiya. Shelling could be heard all around as people rushed through the streets, some barefoot. Occasionally, bodies of people apparently killed in the streets by the shelling could be seen on the sides of the road, according to reporters in the area. Colonel Lerner said ground forces had moved on Shejaiya overnight after area residents had been warned to leave for the past three days. “The mission,” he said, “is targeting Hamas’s terrorist infrastructure, including significant rocket-launching capabilities and an extensive tunnel network designed to aid infiltration into Israel for attacks on soldiers and civilians.
Casualties grew on both sides as Israel pressed on with its campaign aimed at quelling rocket fire into Israel and exposing and destroying a labyrinth of tunnels, including many that lead into Israeli territory, apparently designed for attacks on Israeli soldiers or civilians. “They have made fortified positions of all the town,” Colonel Lerner said, describing an labyrinth of tunnels beneath houses, which he called"Lower Gaza.”
Two Israeli soldiers were killed in combat overnight, according to the military, one by an antitank missile fired at the engineering vehicle he was operating, and the other, an infantry combatant, in battle. That brought to five the total of Israeli soldiers killed since the ground operation began late Thursday. Two Israeli civilians have also been killed by rocket and mortar fire. The military, he said, had found 10 access shafts leading to tunnels beneath Shejaiya and eight percent of the nearly 1,800 rockets fired into Israel since July 8 had been launched from Shejaiya.
The military wing of Hamas claimed early Sunday that it had ambushed an Israeli force after luring it into a minefield in the northeast of Gaza City, causing many more casualties, but there was no immediate confirmation of that from the Israeli side. Detecting and destroying the tunnel system has been a focus of the ground operation so far. Armed militants from Gaza emerged from at least two tunnels dug under the border with Israel on Saturday, clashing with Israeli soldiers and killing two. On Sunday morning the military said it had demolished two tunnels, including one it said led to Netiv Haasara, an Israeli border community just north of Gaza.
The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said that at least 13 Palestinians were killed and more than 200 wounded in the shelling of east Gaza. Gaza Health Ministry officials said at least 403 Palestinians, many of them civilians, have been killed and about 2,600have been wounded during Israel’s 13-day air and ground offensive, according to Reuters. The director of Shifa Hospital said 17 children, 14 women and four elderly were among the dead from Shejaiya.
Among the dead was Osama al-Hayya, his wife and their two children. Mr. Hayya is the son a senior Hamas leader, Khalil al-Hayya, a member of Hamas’s politburo who lives in Shejaiya. More than 350 Palestinians have been killed since July 8, when Israel began its air offensive in Gaza, and more than 2,400 have been wounded, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. About 75 percent of casualties have been civilians, according to the United Nations. Five Israeli soldiers have been killed since the ground operation began late Thursday. Two Israeli civilians have been killed by rocket and mortar fire.
The Israeli military said it had killed at least 70 militants since the start of the ground operation and that Israeli forces had discovered 14 tunnels and 36 access points to tunnels. At the edge of Shejaiya, dark smoke rose above buildings on Sunday and shelling cracked and thumped nearby with hardly a second’s pause between rounds. Shops were closed, and clusters of people periodically emerged from the narrower streets of the neighborhood and rushed up the hill toward downtown.
Armed militants from Gaza emerged from at least two tunnels dug under Gaza’s border on Saturday, in one case wearing Israeli military uniforms and firing a rocket-propelled grenade at two military jeeps on patrol inside Israeli territory, killing two Israeli officers. One militant was killed in that battle, and seven more retreated back to Gaza. In another incursion on Saturday night, Israeli troops fired on a militant who had slipped through a different tunnel and killed him. A chain of five children holding hands trotted uphill, dragged by an adult, the smallest boy, around three, with an expression of confusion and terror. Barefoot, he clutched his flip flops in his hand. A van drove by with five boys on its roof, the inside packed with people and mattresses. Taxis ventured only to the bottom of the street, where they picked up pedestrians, so many on occasion that some had to sit in an open hatchback or trunk.
On Sunday, the military said it had demolished two tunnels with explosives. One of them led to Netiv Haasara, an Israeli border community just north of Gaza, according to Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an army spokesman. Some people sat down as soon as they got out of immediate danger, after a block or so. Asked where she would go, one woman sitting on a stoop with a half-dozen children said, “God knows.”
“The main effort now is to destroy these tunnels,” Colonel Lerner said, adding that most of the exchanges of fire with militants on the ground had to do with the tunnels. “Hamas is trying to save these tunnels,” he said. “It is trying to prevent us from carrying out this activity.” At Shifa Hospital, a girl who looked about 9 was brought into the emergency room and laid on a gurney, blood soaking the shoulder of her shirt. Motionless and barely alive, she stared at the ceiling, her mouth open. There was no relative with her to give her name. The medical staff stood quietly around her. Every now and then, they checked her vital signs, until it was time. They covered her with a white sheet, and she was gone. A few moments later, a new patient lay on the gurney.
Despite the heavier engagement inside Gaza, rocket fire against Israel continued on Sunday morning, though at a lower rate than in previous days. At one point in the dying girl’s final moments, a half-dozen journalists with television cameras crowded around the gurney. In the next bed, a small girl smudged with blood cried, “Mama! Mama!”
One rocket was intercepted over the Tel Aviv area by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, according to the police, and 10 more rockets were fired toward the southern Israeli cities of Beersheba and Ashkelon. Four were intercepted and six landed in open areas, according to the police. Some shrapnel landed in a residential area of Ashkelon but caused no injuries. The hospital grounds were crowded with displaced families sitting on the grass. Some were sprinkled loosly in the sun, others packed side by side in the spots of shade.
Taghreed Harazin, 34, sat under a gazebo with her six-month-old son, Diaa, in the car seat in which she had carried him on foot until finding a taxi. She said she had believed the evacuation order was only for the eastern part of the neighborhood, and mistakenly thought she would be safe at home. Moving was frightening, she said, because of airstrikes.
But during the night, as the family prepared their predawn Ramadan meal – only bread, since there was no electricity to cook with – heavy shelling started. They went to the basement for three hours, then ventured out at dawn.
As the family dashed through the streets to avoid crashing shells, Ms. Harazin, said, she saw the decapitated body of a boy who looked about four, and a wounded woman in a black abaya nearby, both lying on the sidewalk. An ambulance came and took them both away.
“We are not Hamas, and we are not with the others,” Ms. Harazin said. “We just want to live in our homes. The people are not Hamas. Israel has a problem with Hamas. What’s the fault of the other people? We have nothing to do with it.”
Asked what she thought of Hamas’s handling of the current war, she said, “Sometimes it’s difficult to express your opinion.”
She faulted Israel for shelling civilian homes, but said of Hamas’s actions, “If you say any word, it’s held against you.” She said her husband had been beaten for complaining about Hamas.
A lab technician, Ms. Harazin had brought a medical kit with her, along with her son’s diaper bag, in case anyone needed help. She had bandaged the foot of an elderly woman sitting next to her, who cut it on glass as she fled barefoot.
The woman, Wadha Abu Amr, said her family were refugees from what is now Beersheba. They fled from there in 1948 during the war over Israel’s founding.
“I’m afraid that this is another 1948,” she said, “God forbid. We were driven out in 1948 and we are being driven out again now.”