Saturday, January 10, 2009
Israeli forces bombarded on Saturday smuggling tunnels and platforms for launching rockets from Hamas while aircraft left where Israel dropped leaflets warning of an escalation in attacks.
For his part, Palestinian militants fired at least 15 more rockets into Israel and Egypt organized with the goal of ending violence.
We saw smoke and flames rising into the sky over Gaza City. The Israeli threat to launch a "new phase" in its offensive two weeks that has killed more than 800 Palestinians came despite international calls for a ceasefire.
13 Israelis have also died, four of them by the rockets and other militias in battles in the Gaza Strip. Five soldiers were lightly wounded in the fighting on Saturday.
"The IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) carried out the operation of an escalation in the Gaza Strip," the leaflets warned in Arabic. "IDF forces are not working against the people of Gaza, but Hamas and the terrorists. Stay safe by following our orders," they added.
The text urged the residents of Gaza to help and not away from Hamas, the Islamic militia group that governs the strip.
Israel launched an air offensive on December 27 after years of Palestinian rocket attacks against southern Israel. A week later, the campaign was reinforced by ground forces with artillery fire and tanks, which have contributed to an increase in civilian casualties.
The launch of the leaflets appeared to be part of a psychological strategy. The Israeli defense authorities said they are preparing a third phase of the offensive in which ground troops would move more in Gaza, but is still awaiting government approval.
In the bloodiest incident of the day, an Israeli artillery shell fell on a house outside the northern city of Yebaliya, killing nine persons while sitting in his garden.
In a separate, one woman was killed by an Israeli air strike in the southern town of Rafah.
Israeli forces said that more than 15 militiamen were killed Saturday in heavy fighting in the Gaza Strip. Its more than 40 planes bombed targets throughout the country, including 10 rocket launching areas, the storage of weapons smuggling tunnels, anti-aircraft missile launchers and armed groups.
Israel has been severely criticized in the world for the growing number of civilians killed in the fighting. Paramedics said that the nine victims of the attack were from the same clan and included two children and two women.
"The residents brought to the hospital in a civilian car. The all put in the boot because their bodies were very mixed," said manager Adham Hakim. "The identified shortly after a separate their bodies in the morgue."
The Israeli army did not comment immediately, but has repeatedly blamed Hamas militiamen of using residential areas for refuge. In recent days, an Israeli attack at a school in the United Nations left nearly 40 dead.
Both Israel and Palestinian witnesses said that militiamen carried out an attack from the area moments before.
In Cairo, the Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas on Saturday urged Israel and Hamas to accept a truce mediated by Egypt.
After meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Abbas stressed that there was no time to lose to end the bloodshed in the Gaza Strip, where 1.4 million people.
