GAZA CITY: Israeli warplanes pounded on Friday targets across Gaza, where at least five Palestinians were killed and militants fired dozens of rockets into Israel after renewed hostilities ruptured a fledgling three-day truce.
The month-long conflict flared once again after mediators tried but failed to extend a ceasefire.
Egypt, which is mediating between Israelis and Palestinians, insisted negotiations were making progress but Israel recalled its delegation and warned it would not negotiate under fire.
Also read: Gaza killings genocide: Pakistan
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the military to retaliate “forcefully” and blamed the Islamist movement Hamas for breaching the ceasefire.
The army said 35 air strikes had been carried out across Gaza on Friday.
Palestinian militants fired 35 rockets into Israel, injuring one civilian and a soldier, the army said.
The violence ended the 72-hour lull in fighting between Israel and Hamas that has killed at least 1,898 Palestinians and 67 people on the Israeli side, almost all soldiers, since July 8.
Five Palestinians were killed and at least 31 others wounded in Israeli air strikes, said Ashraf al-Qudra, Gaza’s emergency services spokesman. Among the dead was a 10-year-old boy.
Some Palestinian families who had returned home trickled back to shelter in UN-run schools after militants fired rockets at Israel and Israel retaliated from the skies.
The United Nations says at least 1,354 of the Palestinians killed in the fighting since July 8 were civilians, including 447 children.
In southern Israel, the army banned gatherings larger than 500 people within 40km of Gaza and said kindergarten and summer camps could only operate if there was a bomb shelter nearby.
In Gaza, the interior ministry said Israeli warplanes struck targets in Jabaliya in the north, Gaza City and in the centre of the Palestinian enclave. Israel claimed it was targeting “terror sites”.
Egypt called for an immediate return of the ceasefire and said progress had been made in the negotiations.
The head of a Palestinian delegation in Cairo said they were committed to achieving a truce. “We told the Egyptians (mediators) we are sitting here to achieve a final agreement that restores the rights” of Palestinians, Azzam al-Ahmed told reporters.
Hamas and the Islamic Jihad group had rejected another 72-hour truce, accusing Israel of stalling.
“There had been an agreement on the vast majority of matters that are important to the Palestinian people, but some limited points remained undecided, a matter that should have led to an acceptance to renew the ceasefire,” the Egyptian foreign ministry said.
Published in Dawn, August 9th, 2014
