Gaza Death Toll Hits 572, Israel Says 7 More Troops Killed as Abbas, Meshaal Issue Joint Call for 'End to Aggression'
World efforts to broker a ceasefire in war-torn Gaza gathered pace Monday as Israel pressed a blistering 14-day assault on the enclave, pushing the Palestinian death toll to 572.
As Washington and the United Nations demanded an "immediate ceasefire" in the battered Palestinian enclave, Israel announced that seven more of its soldiers had been killed during fighting in Gaza, raising the overall Israeli death toll to 27, all but two of them soldiers.
The announcement came a day after 13 soldiers were killed, making Sunday the highest one-day death toll sustained by the Israeli army since the 2006 Lebanon war.
Gaza emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said air strikes and shelling killed 55 people across the enclave on Monday, and another 68 bodies were pulled from the rubble in areas hit by heavy fighting a day earlier.
The army also said its troops had killed "more than 10 militants" who had infiltrated southern Israel through two tunnels, sparking a firefight that reportedly wounded several soldiers.
Militants killed inside Israel are not included in Qudra's Gaza toll.
The latest deaths included six people killed in two artillery strikes, three of whom died in the southern city of Rafah and another three in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.
Of the 55 people killed on Monday, around a third of them were children, Qudra said.
Seven children were among nine dead in an air raid on a house in Rafah, and another four children were killed in another strike on a house in Gaza City that killed nine people.
A nighttime air strike on a residential tower block in Gaza City killed 11 people, including five children, Qudra said, and a simultaneous strike in the central Strip killed another.
And Israeli tank shells slammed into a hospital in Deir al-Balah, killing four people, among them doctors, Qudra said, indicating at least 70 people were wounded.
Another 32 people were killed in a series of air strikes and tank shelling across the strip.
Of the 68 bodies recovered on Monday, 13 were from Shejaiya, hiking the death toll from a blistering Sunday attack to 74. Qudra said the vast majority were women, children and the elderly.
Another 23 of the bodies were pulled from a three-story house belonging to the Abu Jamaa family in the southern city of Khan Yunis which was hit on Sunday, raising the overall death toll from a single strike to 28, Qudra said.
So far, Palestinian figures show 572 Gazans have been killed and more than 3,350 wounded since the start of the Israeli campaign to stamp out cross-border rocket fire on July 8.
On the Israeli side, 27 people have died, including two civilians killed by rocket fire and 25 soldiers all of whom were killed since the start of a ground operation late on July 17.
Army figures indicate another 30 soldiers were wounded in Gaza since Sunday, three of whom were in serious condition. Military radio put the overall injury toll at more than 90 soldiers since the ground assault began.
Since the Israeli military started Operation Protective Edge on July 8 in a bid to stamp out rocket fire, Palestinian militants have fired 1,488 mortars and rockets that hit Israel, with air defenses intercepting another 392, the army said.
Approximately 84 stuck Israel on Monday, one of them in the greater Tel Aviv area, while another 16 were shot down, the army said.
Following the deadliest day in Gaza since 2009, with at least 140 Palestinians killed on Sunday, medics pulled another 68 bodies from the rubble on Monday, emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said.
Since the Israeli operation began on July 8, huge numbers of Gazans have fled their homes, with more than 85,000 people taking shelter in 67 schools run by UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, a spokesman said.
By Monday morning, a U.N. school on the outskirts of Shejaiya was packed to overflowing with people seeking shelter, many sleeping in the corridors, an Agence France-Presse correspondent said.
And several families were sleeping in the gardens of Gaza City's Shifa hospital in the hope they would be safe from the bombing.
Meanwhile, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal issued a joint appeal for an end to "Israeli aggression" in Gaza during talks in Doha.
Meeting Monday for the first time since the start of the Israeli assault on Gaza on July 8, the two men also called for Israel to lift its blockade of the Hamas-controlled territory.
They "underlined the necessity of an end to the Israeli aggression and a lifting of the blockade", chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said.
He said the two men also "decided to hold further consultations with different Palestinian factions and contacts" on ceasefire efforts.
Azzam al-Ahmed, a senior official in Abbas' Fatah party, is to travel to Egypt, which last week proposed a ceasefire plan supported by the Arab League but rejected by Hamas, Erakat said.
U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon arrived Monday in Cairo, where U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was also due later the same day, as international efforts to secure a ceasefire gathered pace.
Hamas has demanded the release of scores of prisoners from Israeli jails, the reopening of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt and an end to Israel's blockade of Gaza.
"These are not conditions but engagements that Israel must honor," Erakat said.
Although Israel said Sunday it was expanding its ground operation to destroy cross-border tunnels, Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon suggested the mission could be accomplished within days.
Source: Agence France Presse, Naharnet, Associated Press
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