The death toll at Gaza reached more than 150 while Israeli Air Strike continues to hit the densely populated area. Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains adamant and vows start a ground offensive in Gaza while brushing aside world pressure to stop air strikes on civilian population.
Again failing to play its due role as the enforcer of peace across the world, the U.N. Security Council, after days of discussion, issued a mere statement expressing concern about the welfare of civilians at both sides. “The Security Council members called for de-escalation of the situation, restoration of calm and reinstitution of the November 2012 ceasefire,” the 15-member body said.
A mosque in the central Gaza Strip had been bombed to rubble, residents said. The Israeli military said the mosque had housed a weapons cache. Eight other mosques have been damaged by bombing and 537 Gaza houses have either been destroyed or damaged, Gaza-based Al-Mezan Association for Human Rights said.
There has been an outpour all over the world over Israel’s blind air strikes at an area which is densely populated with more than 2 million civilians.
“HUGE NUMBER OF CIVILIANS KILLED”
Gaza medical officials said most of the bodies among the 150 dead so far were of civilians with more than 35 children and women. The territory hit by the air strikes is a densely populated area with nearly 2 million.
The air strikes on early Saturday resulted in 15 civilians deaths, including a 65 year old man and two disabled women at a rehabilitation centre, doctors there said. An Israeli military spokeswoman had no comment.
One of the dead in an air strike that killed six people in a Gaza street was identified as the nephew of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas political leader in the territory.
“PREPARING FOR ALL POSSIBILITIES”
Asked if Israel might move from the mostly aerial attacks of the past four days into a ground war in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “We are weighing all possibilities and preparing for all possibilities.”
Casualties on both sides would probably rise sharply if Israeli forces stormed the largely urbanized enclave. A ground invasion of Gaza would be the first since a three-week war with Hamas in 2008-09 in which 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed.
Egypt’s state news agency said that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi had met with Tony Blair, envoy for the so-called Quartet of United Nations, EU, Russia and United States, in efforts to secure a truce.
An Israeli government official said Blair had met with Netanyahu on Friday. “There are no serious contacts toward a truce. There are many proposals, but as long as Hamas keeps firing, Israel will keep fighting and will not discuss a truce.”
Cairo played a crucial role in mediating a truce that ended an eight-day war between Hamas and Israel in 2012, when Egypt was governed by Hamas’s Muslim Brotherhood allies.
Egypt’s current military-backed government is locked in a feud with Hamas over the group’s alleged support for jihadi militants in Egypt’s Sinai desert – which Hamas denies. This could complicate Cairo’s efforts at mediation. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said: “We will not beg for calm and we continue to defend our people. Once we are offered a genuine, coherent and serious proposal, we will look into it.”