Resumed Israeli Strikes Kill 6 Palestinians In Gaza, Death Toll 1,058
By Ma'an News Agency
27 July, 2014
Maannews.net
GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Six Palestinians were killed and several others were injured Sunday in Gaza after Israeli forces resumed attacks, an official said.
Ashraf al-Qidra told reporters that two Palestinian men were killed in al-Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.
He identified the two as 27-year-old Ibrahim Khalil Dirawi and 24-year-old Alaa Nahid Matar.
Additionally, an Israeli attack on Khan Younis killed Issam Abu Saadah and Hazim Abu Shamalah in the al-Zanna area.
He said later that two Palestinians were killed east of Khan Younis in an Israeli airstrike on a motorcycle.
A Ma'an reporter in Gaza said that shelling could be heard across the Strip, and that Israeli warplanes were hovering overhead.
Israeli forces shelled the central Gaza Strip, targeting al-Bureij refugee camp, where many residents who returned to their homes Saturday remained, thinking the ceasefire would still be in effect as originally announced by Israeli officials.
Separately, a Palestinian child, Fadi Baraka, had succumbed to his wounds in a hospital in Egypt, and Baha al-Din Ahmad Said succumbed to his wounds in al-Maghazi refugee camp, bringing Gaza total death toll to 1,058.
The Israeli army said in a statement early Sunday that it would resume attacks on Gaza by air, land, and sea in response to rocket fire from Gaza militants.
Officials had earlier said Israel would extend Saturday's brief humanitarian ceasefire until midnight Sunday, but that its soldiers would continue searching for and destroying tunnels in the Strip throughout that time.
Hamas and other factions rejected the truce extension, with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine saying it was an attempt to ignore Palestinian demands.
Hamas said in a statement that "no humanitarian ceasefire is valid without Israeli tanks withdrawing from the Gaza Strip and without residents being able to return to their homes and ambulances carrying bodies being able to freely move around in Gaza."
Recovery of bodies Saturday
During Saturday's 12-hour ceasefire, medics digging through the remains of hundreds of Gaza homes uncovered at least 147 bodies.
On the ground, Palestinian ambulances sped into Gaza neighborhoods that have been too dangerous to enter for days.
Palestinians ventured onto Gaza's streets after the truce began, some eager to check homes they had fled, others to stock up on supplies.
In many places they found devastation: buildings leveled, and entire blocks of homes wiped out by Israeli bombardment.
In northern Beit Hanoun, the hospital was badly damaged by shelling, and AFP correspondents saw the charred body of a paramedic.
There were similar scenes in Shujaiyya, where stiff bodies lay on the floor of a room in one building, one caked in dried blood, all of them covered in dust.
East of southern Khan Younis, residents were denied access most of the day to the heavily-hit Khuzaa neighborhood, with Israeli forces remaining inside the border area.
And in nearby Bani Suheila, where 20 people were killed in a single Israeli air strike shortly before the truce began, women and children wept as they discovered their homes destroyed.
Some 80 percent of those killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza are civilians, according to rights groups.
The UN agency for children says that 192 Palestinian children have been killed during the latest conflict so far
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