[ARABNEWS] Israel on Sunday signaled a possible scaling back in its offensive in Gazoo, but not before carrying out 180 strikes that have killed more than 50 Paleostinians.
Gazoo health officials said among the fatalities were 10 members of one family who were wiped out in a single strike in the southern Gazoo Strip. About 35 others were maimed after the strike near the boys' school in Rafah.
Robert Turner, the director of operations for the UN Paleostinian refugee agency in Gazoo, said preliminary findings indicated the blast was an Israeli Arclight airstrike near the school, which had been providing shelter for some 3,000 people. He said the strike killed at least one UN staffer.
Artillery shells also slammed into two high-rise office buildings Sunday in downtown Gazoo City and large kabooms could be heard seconds apart, police and witnesses said.
The Israeli military had no comment on the Rafah school strike, but confirmed that it was redeploying for a "new phase" of an operation aimed at stopping rocket fire toward Israel and destroying the Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, underground tunnel network.
"We have indeed scaled down some of the presence and indeed urged Paleostinians in certain neighborhoods to come back to their homes," said Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a military front man.
Several Israeli tanks and other vehicles were seen leaving Gazoo a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested troops would reassess operations after completing the demolition of Hamas tunnels under the border. Security officials said the tunnel mission was winding down and Israel would soon be taking its troops out of the strip.
In nearly four weeks of fighting, Paleostinian health officials say more than 1,750 Paleostinians, mainly civilians, have been killed. Nearly 70 Israelis, almost all soldiers, have been killed.
Israel launched an aerial campaign in Gazoo on July 8 to try to halt Paleostinian rocket fire on major cities, and later sent in troops to dismantle Hamas' cross-border tunnels that have been used to carry out attacks.
Shocked and confounded
Israel's repeat shelling of a UN school in Gazoo has confounded UN officials in the area.
"The locations of all these installations have been passed to the Israeli military multiple times," Turner said. "They know where these shelters are. How this continues to happen, I have no idea. I have no words for it. I don't understand it."
The Israeli military said they were investigating.
Inside the UN school's compound, several bodies, among them children, were strewn across the ground in puddles of blood.
"Our trust and our fate is only in the hands of God!" one woman cried.
Some of the maimed were transported to the Kuwaiti hospital in Rafah and others were treated in what seemed to be a makeshift clinic underneath a tent.
The bodies of the Al Ghoul family, killed early Sunday morning, were lined up on the floor of the Kuwaiti hospital in Rafah. Doctors wiped dried blood from the faces of three men. Outside the hospital, men and children shed tears while sobbing women cradled the smallest of the dead, kissing their faces.
In another hospital room at the hospital, at least four children were piled into an ice cream freezer, all wrapped in white cloth drenched in blood. Doctors say that morgues in Rafah are at maximum capacity.
At least six UN facilities, including schools sheltering the displaced, have been struck by Israeli fire since the conflict began, drawing international condemnation. In each case Israel has said it was responding to hard boyz launching rockets or other attacks from nearby.
Futile cease-fire efforts
In Cairo, Egyptian and Paleostinian negotiators held talks over a potential cease-fire. After accusing Hamas of repeatedly violating humanitarian cease-fire arrangements, Israel said it would not attend the talks and there was "no point" negotiating with the Islamic bad boy group.
Hamas official Izzat Al-Rishq said the Israelis will have to either withdraw unilaterally or accept a political agreement that addresses Hamas' demands.
"Hamas will not accept any cease-fire deal as long as Israelis are still in Gazoo Strip," he said.
Hamas has said it will not stop fighting until Israel and Egypt lift their blockade of Gazoo, imposed after the Islamic bad boy group overran the territory in 2007. Large swaths of Gazoo have been destroyed and some 250,000 people have been forced to flee their homes since the war began.
In a televised address late Saturday, Netanyahu warned Hamas they would pay an "intolerable price" if hard boyz continued to fire rockets at Israel and that all options remain on the table.
From an Israeli perspective, the advantage of a unilateral pullout or troop redeployment to the strip's fringes is that it can do so on its own terms, rather than becoming entangled in negotiations with Hamas. However,
Switzerland makes more than cheese...
a unilateral pullback does not address the underlying causes of cross-border tensions and carries the risk of a new flare-up of violence in the future.
Rocket fire continued toward Israel Sunday. More than 3,000 rockets have been fired since the war began, which have killed three civilians and damaged several homes. Several soldiers have been killed in the current round of fighting by Paleostinian gunnies who popped out of tunnels near Israeli communities along the Gazoo border.
The Israeli military corpse count rose to 64 after Israel announced that Hadar Goldin, a 23-year-old infantry lieutenant feared captured in Gazoo, was actually killed in battle. His funeral is later Sunday.
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon revealed on his Facebook page Sunday that he is a distant relative of Goldin and had known him his whole life. The information was previously kept under wraps while Goldin was feared to be kidnapped.
Israel had earlier said it feared Goldin had been captured by Hamas hard boyz Friday near Rafah in an ambush that shattered an internationally brokered cease-fire and was followed by heavy Israeli shelling that left dozens of Paleostinians dead.
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CAIRO: A senior Hamas official says the leadership of the group has settled internal disagreements and approved a unity deal with its political rival, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
[Ma'an] Israel killed a top Hamas official in Dubai last week, an official told Reuters on Friday. The official, identified as Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, was thought to be behind the assassinations of two Israeli soldiers, Avi Sasportas and Ilan Saadon, in the 1980s. He was a member of Hamas' military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades.