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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Gaza update |
| 2014-07-20 |
| Israeli bulldozers demolished more than a dozen tunnels on Saturday in the Gaza Strip, and Palestinian authorities reported intensified airstrikes and shelling as the death toll from Israel's ground offensive rose to at least 342 Palestinians. Diplomats struggled to revive a ceasefire. Israeli soldiers uncovered 34 shafts leading into about a dozen underground tunnels, some as deep as 30 metres, that could be used to carry out attacks, the military said. Still, Palestinian gunmen managed to infiltrate Israel from Gaza using another tunnel and killed two Israeli soldiers and injured several others, the military said. At least one Palestinian was killed in the clash. Hamas said 12 of its fighters participated in the attack. It was the second time Palestinians had used their network of underground tunnels to penetrate Israel in the current round of fighting. Israel embarked on its ground offensive late Thursday in part to seek and destroy the tunnels. Thirteen heavily armed Palestinians sneaked through a tunnel from Gaza and emerged inside Israel near a southern community. The militants were killed by an Israeli airstrike after they popped out of the tunnel. Shimon Daniel, a retired brigadier general and former head of the Israeli military's engineer corps, said the military knew that Hamas had a large number of tunnels designed to assault Israel. "I think finding 13 tunnels in such a short time is a great achievement," he told Channel 10 TV. "These tunnels aren't for hiding. They are intended for large attacks in Israeli communities and army bases," chief military spokesman Brig. Gen. Moti Almoz said. Footage released by the Israeli military showed tunnels being demolished by army excavators and other equipment on the ground and by airstrikes from above. Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al Kidra said the new round of airstrikes raised the death toll from the 12-day offensive to at least 342 Palestinians, many of them civilians. In Israel, a Gaza rocket killed a man near the southern city of Dimona and wounded four people, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said, marking the second Israeli civilian casualty from the fighting. An Israeli soldier was killed after the start of the ground operation, probably from friendly fire. Israel says it is going to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties and blames them on Hamas, accusing it of firing from within residential neighbourhoods and using civilians as "human shields." The military said it has hit more than 2,350 targets in Gaza, including 1,100 rocket launchers, during the 12 days of fighting. It said that some 70 "terrorists" were and another 13 brought to Israel for questioning. Gaza militants have fired more than 1,600 rockets at Israeli cities since July 8. |
| Posted by:Steve White |