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Israel’s bombing of the Gaza Strip spread in a second week after international efforts at the UN to achieve a ceasefire stalled and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised that fighting would continue with “full force.”
Israel’s airstrike on the blocked strip included the homes of nine commanders of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, the Israeli army said Monday, a day later hit the houses of the head of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, and his brother.
Witnesses described synchronized airstrikes in the early hours of the morning at the northern end of the Hamas-controlled Mediterranean enclave and in the densely populated city center of Gaza. Hamas continued to do so fire rockets to Israel.
On Sunday night, Israeli strikes had killed 197 Palestinians, including 92 women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Israel has reported ten deaths from Hamas attacks, including two children.
Netanyahu said Sunday afternoon that the country would continue his military campaign against the Islamist group “with all its might.”
“There is talk of international pressure. There is always pressure, but nevertheless, we receive very serious support, first and foremost from the United States, ”he said.
No statement was issued after the UN Security Council meeting on the conflict on Sunday. The United States twice blocked minor Security Council statements or measures last week during closed meetings on violence.
WE President Joe Biden He said in a recorded message for Eid al-Fitr, the religious holiday marking the end of Ramadan, that he was working with Palestinians and Israelis towards a “sustained calm.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he had spoken with his counterparts in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt. “The violence must end immediately,” he said wrote on Twitter.
Israeli airstrikes on Sunday tore down residential buildings in a middle-class neighborhood and killed at least 42 people buried under the rubble, including 10 children, Gazan’s health ministry said. The Israeli Defense Forces described the deaths as “unwanted,” saying the bombings had been aimed at an underground network of Hamas tunnels.
The Israeli army has sought the return of the bodies of two soldiers before considering a truce with Hamas, a government aide said. At stake is the fate of two Israeli civilians detained in Gaza, the assistant added. Hamas has clung to the bodies for a possible prisoner exchange.
Protesters against Israeli airstrikes attend a rally in Chicago, Illinois on Sunday © Getty Images
UN mediation, Egypt and Qatar to achieve a two-hour ceasefire and allow fuel in Gaza failed after the Israeli military attacked Sinwar’s house on Saturday night, according to an Egyptian diplomat reported on the conversations. Sinwar was released from an Israeli prison in 2011 during a prisoner exchange and has since climbed to the top of Hamas leadership.
On Sunday, UN trucks carrying fuel managed to reach Gaza’s only power plant during a break in fighting, a Western diplomat told FT.
2m from Gaza residents have been blocked by Israel and Egypt since 2007 in response to Hamas ’victory in the previous year’s Palestinian legislative elections.
The conflict has spread beyond the Gaza Strip, with communal conflicts exploding in Israeli cities between Jews and minority Arabs of Israeli nationality, as well as in the occupied West Bank.
A total of 21 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, including in the West Bank occupied East Jerusalem, have been killed and more than 4,000 injured in ten days of clashes with Israeli soldiers, the Palestinian health ministry said. The territory, which Israel has occupied since the 1967 war, is home to Fatah, the rival Palestinian faction of Hamas.
There appeared to be widespread police deployment in several mixed Israeli cities suffocated community violence, which had exposed a deep rupture in Israeli society, with dozens of Jews and Arabs attacked, synagogues and hundreds of cars burned.
The last a crisis was unleashed when police used rubber bullets, tear gas and stun grenades against Palestinian protesters on the grounds of al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam. More than 600 Palestinians were injured.
The al-Aqsa Mosque is located in a precinct of Jerusalem that is sacred to both religions. Hamas entered the fight last week, firing rockets at Israel, which responded with airstrikes. The Islamist group has launched more than 3,100 rockets since Monday, according to IDF, which have carried out 1,500 strikes.
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