Thousands flee Gaza after Israeli warning
By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Ari Rabinovitch
6:54 AM CDT, July 13, 2014
GAZA/JERUSALEM
Thousands fled their homes in a Gaza town Sunday
after Israel warned them to leave ahead of threatened attacks on
rocket-launching sites, on the sixth day of an offensive that
Palestinian officials said has killed at least 160 people.
"Those
who fail to comply with the instructions will endanger their lives and
the lives of their families. Beware," read a leaflet dropped by the
Israeli military in the town of Beit Lahiya, near the border with
Israel.
Militants in the
Islamist-ruled Gaza Strip kept up rockets salvoes deep into the Jewish
state and the worst bout of Israel-Palestinian bloodshed in two years
showed no signs of abating despite mounting international pressure to
cease fire.
A Palestinian woman and a girl, aged 3, were killed in Israeli air strikes early on Sunday,
Gaza's Health Ministry said. Hours earlier, the ministry said 18 people
were killed when the house of Gaza's police chief was bombed from the
air in the single deadliest attack of Israel's offensive.
Despite
intensified Israeli military action - which included a commando raid
overnight in what was Israel's first reported ground action in Gaza
during the current fighting - militants continued to launch rocket after
rocket across the border.
A long-range salvo on Sunday
morning triggered air raid sirens at Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion
international airport, which has not been hit in the hostilities and
where flights have been operating normally, and some city suburbs.
On Saturday night, Hamas--the Islamist movement that rules Gaza--made good on a threat to send rockets streaking toward Tel Aviv at 1 p.m. CDT [at 9:00 PM Israel time. D] and other areas in heavily populated central Israel.
Hundreds
of thousands of Israelis sought shelter as Palestinians in the streets
of Gaza City cheered the launchings, the biggest strike yet on the Tel
Aviv metropolitan area.
Those rockets and the ones unleashed on Sunday
were intercepted by the Israeli-built, and partly U.S.-funded, Iron
Dome missile defense system that has proved effective against Hamas's
most powerful weaponry.
No
one has been killed by the more than 800 rockets the Israeli military
said has been fired since the offensive began, and during Saturday
night's barrage, customers in Tel Aviv beachfront cafes shouted their
approval as they watched the projectiles being shot out of the sky.
The
Gaza Health Ministry said at least 160 Palestinians, including about
135 civilians - among them some 30 children, have been killed six days
of warfare, and more than 1,000 have been wounded.
Israeli
leaflets dropped on Beit Lahiya, where 70,000 Palestinians live, said
civilians in three of its 10 neighborhoods were "requested to evacuate
their residences" and move south, deeper into the Gaza Strip, by 12 p.m.
The
Gaza Interior Ministry, in a statement on Hamas radio, dismissed the
Israeli warnings as "psychological warfare" and instructed those who
left their homes to return and others to stay put.
The
warnings cited roads that residents could use safely and said Israeli
forces intended to attack "every area from where rockets are being
launched". The military did not say in the leaflet whether the strike
would include ground troops.
It
was the first time Israel had warned Palestinians to vacate dwellings
in such a wide area. Previous warnings, by telephone or so-called
"knock-on-the-door" missiles without explosive warheads, had been
directed at individual homes slated for attack.
At least 4,000 people fled Beit Lahiya and crowded into eight U.N.-run schools in Gaza City on Sunday, a spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency said.
Some
arrived on donkey carts filled with children, luggage and mattresses,
while others came by car or taxi. One man, still in his pajamas, said
some residents had received phone calls warning them to clear out.
"What could we do? We had to run in order to save the lives of our children," said Salem Abu Halima, 25, a father of two.
Ground invasion option
Israel
says a ground invasion of Gaza remains an option, and it has already
mobilized more than 30,000 reservists to do so, but most attacks have so
far been from the air, hitting some 1,200 targets in the territory.
International
pressure on both sides for a return to calm has increased, with the
U.N. Security Council calling for a cessation of hostilities and Western
foreign ministers due to meet on Sunday
to weigh strategy. Hostilities along the Israel-Gaza frontier first
intensified last month after Israeli forces arrested hundreds of Hamas
activists in the Israeli-occupied West Bank following the abduction
there of three Jewish teenagers who were later found killed. A
Palestinian youth was then killed in Jerusalem in a suspected Israeli
revenge attack.
Giving details of the naval commando operation early on Sunday,
Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, an Israeli military spokesman, said
four members of the force were wounded in exchanges of fire with
militants but the long-range rocket launching site they attacked was
hit.
Hamas said its fighters had
fired at the Israeli force offshore, preventing them from landing.
Lerner said the forces had "completed their mission".
Israel
said it has carried out 1,320 attacks on militant targets, that have
included homes - which it described as command centers - warehouses,
smuggling tunnels and rocket launching and manufacturing sites.
Palestinian
residents say some of the dwellings hit in the attacks did not belong
to militants and that attacks on homes have caused numerous civilian
casualties.
A
Hamas source commenting on the air strike against the Gaza police
chief's home said the officer, Tayseer Al-Batsh, was in critical
condition. All of those killed in the air strike. which television
footage showed was reduced to piles of rubble, were members of
Al-Batsh's family.
Ashraf
Al-Qidra, spokesman for the Gaza Health Ministry, said 45 people were
wounded in the bombing. An Israeli teenager was wounded on Sunday by a rocket that struck the southern town of Ashkelon, emergency services said.
Israel
says it tries to avoid civilian casualties and accuses of Hamas of
putting innocent Gazans in harm's way by placing weaponry and gunmen in
residential areas.
A
senior Israeli military officer said aircraft had aborted "hundreds" of
strikes to avoid collateral damage and that targets bombed were meant
to impact Hamas fire capacity.
Israel's north also came under rocket fire late on Saturday,
from Lebanon. Hamas, which is not known to have a presence in southern
Lebanon, claimed responsibility for the attack, which Israel suspects
was launched by other Palestinian militants.
After three rockets landed, causing no damage or casualties, Israeli artillery fired into Lebanon, the military said.
Reuters
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