Israeli Assaults Death Toll Exceeds 2012 War to Reach 184, Qassam Brigades Send Locally-Made Drones over Israel

The death toll from Israel's seven-day air campaign against Gaza rose to 184 on Monday, exceeding that of the last conflict in the besieged Palestinian territory, in 2012.

Five Palestinians were killed in two separate air strikes late Monday, hiking the toll above the 177 people killed in the last major round of violence between Israel and its Islamist foe Hamas in November 2012.

Emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said the strikes killed three people in Rafah in the south of Gaza, including a young child, and two people in Khan Yunis, also in the south.

A U.N. official said on Monday that more than a quarter of those killed in Gaza since the violence began last week were children.

"All indications are, and I find this particularly dramatic, that women and children make up a sizable number of the victims of the current strikes. Currently more than one quarter of the fatalities are children," UNRWA Commissioner General Pierre Krahenbuhl said on Monday.

Earlier, a strike in Gaza City killed a young man, and another Palestinian died of wounds sustained in an earlier raid.

East of Khan Yunis, an Israeli missile struck a motorcycle, killing 17-year-old Ziyad al-Najjar, Qudra said.

His death came shortly after another strike in the same area, which killed a 37-year-old.

A 60-year-old man was killed in a raid on a house in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, and two other people died in separate strikes elsewhere in the coastal enclave, Qudra said.

Earlier, a man and a woman wounded in air strikes on Sunday died of their injuries.

In all, 14 people were killed on Monday, with the total number wounded in the conflict rising to 1,280.

The Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) said on Sunday that more than three-quarters of the dead were civilians.

The Center also said Israel had hit 147 homes and badly damaged hundreds of others.

Also, an army spokeswoman said earlier that troops in the West Bank had arrested 23 Palestinians overnight as part of their ongoing campaign to hunt down those who kidnapped and killed three Israeli teenagers last month.

Palestinian security sources said the soldiers had arrested 13 people from the Hebron area overnight, three of them Hamas parliamentarians: Nayef Rajub from Dura, Mohammed Jheisha from Idhna and Mohammed Akel from Dhahiriya.

The Palestinian Prisoners Club said in a statement Israel had detained 11 Hamas parliamentarians overnight, raising the number of Palestinian lawmakers being held by Israel to 34, 23 of whom had been arrested since mid-June.

Early on Monday, Israel hit the Gaza Strip with air strikes and artillery fire on the seventh day of its offensive and as diplomatic efforts to halt the bloodshed intensified.

Aircraft struck three training facilities of Hamas's military wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, around the coastal territory, but caused no casualties, medics and eyewitnesses said.

They also hit buildings in Gaza City, Deir el-Balah in the southern part of the strip, and in the northern town of Jabaliya, injuring an unspecified number of people.

There was shelling reported in Beit Lahiya, in the far north of the strip, where Israel had earlier warned residents of an impending assault.

Meanwhile, Hamas boasted Monday that it had launched a drone flight deep into Israel, targeting the defense ministry in the heart of Tel Aviv.

The Israeli army confirmed that it had shot down one unmanned aircraft of the sort it has deployed in huge numbers over Gaza in the past week launched by its Islamist foe.

But it said the drone was downed well south of the Israeli metropolis and did not confirm claims by Hamas's armed wing that it had launched eight other unmanned aircraft into Israel in the unprecedented assault.

"The engineers of Qassam were able to produce unmanned aerial vehicles, nicknamed "Ababil", and made three reconnaissance models, others that can fire (missiles) and others still for suicide (kamikaze) attacks," Hamas's armed wing the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades said in a statement.

"For the first time, the drones today undertook a mission above the defense ministry building in Tel Aviv, from which the aggression against Gaza is being directed," it said.

It did not specify what "mission" the drones were carrying out -- whether an attack or reconnaissance flight.

"Our drones this morning undertook three sorties -- with at least three drones on each sortie," it said, adding that the Qassam Brigades had "lost contact with two drones."

Early Monday, the Israeli army said it had used a Patriot surface-to-air missile to shoot down a drone off the Mediterranean port of Ashdod, 28 kilometers (17 miles) north of Gaza and a similar distance south of Tel Aviv.

But the military dismissed as "rumors" the Hamas claim that any drones had penetrated further north, saying it had detected just the one it shot down.

During the day, Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV played video showing a drone in the air, with its flight separately filmed by a camera attached to it, with what looked like missiles on the wings.

In 2012, during its last major operation against Gaza, Israel said it had destroyed a military drone production workshop set up by Hamas.

An Israeli video at the time showed a drone test flight over Gaza.

The unmanned aircraft have earned notoriety for their use by Washington in its "war against terror" in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, which has been condemned by human rights groups for its high civilian casualty toll.

World powers, meanwhile, prepared to meet over the spiraling violence as the Palestinian death toll from the punishing Israeli air campaign hit 172 with another 1,230 people wounded, the emergency services said.

Fearing for their lives, about 17,000 people have taken shelter in installations of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, the agency said in a statement.

Despite increasing calls for a ceasefire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military was hitting Hamas "with growing force", warning there was no end in sight.

"We do not know when this operation will end," he told ministers.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry phoned Netanyahu to renew a U.S. offer to help mediate a truce and he "highlighted the U.S. concern about escalating tensions on the ground," a senior State Department official said.

Kerry also said that he was engaged with regional leaders "to help to stop the rocket fire so calm can be restored and civilian casualties prevented".

On the Palestinian side, president Mahmoud Abbas said he would ask U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon to "put the State of Palestine under the U.N. international protection system" in order to address the violence in Gaza.

So far, no Israelis have been killed, although militants in Gaza have pounded the south and center of the country with about 715 rockets since the fighting began on July 8, an army spokeswoman told Agence France Presse late Sunday. Around 160 had been intercepted, she said.

According to Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, the operation had so far caused "huge" damage to Hamas.

"When Hamas leaders come out of their hiding places, they will see the scale of destruction and damage we have caused them, which will cause them to regret ever beginning this round of fighting against Israel," he said in a statement.

A senior military official said the army was using a so-called "pain map," hitting targets seen as most valuable to Hamas.

"This will impair its abilities and force it into a difficult process, as long as possible, of post-war rehabilitation," he told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"The harder we hit them, the longer and more difficult the process, and more effective the deterrence."

But Hamas has continued to hit back.

Early Monday, the army said it had used Patriot surface-to-air-missile to shoot down a drone (UAV) off the Ashdod coastline, 28 kilometers (17 miles) north of Gaza.

Hamas's armed wing took responsibility for the drone in a Hebrew-language posting on Twitter, which said it had launched "a number of UAVs deep inside the Zionist enemy entity," pledging to give further details later.

Meanwhile and for the first time during the Israeli operation, a rocket fired from Syria hit the Israeli-occupied sector of the Golan heights but landed on empty ground, causing no casualties.

Israel responded with artillery fire at Syrian army positions, the Israeli military said.

Four rockets fired from southern Lebanon struck northern Israel early Monday, Lebanese security sources said.

No casualties were reported in Israel and the army responded with artillery fire.

An AFP correspondent in southern Lebanon reported more than 30 shells were fired, but there was no information yet on casualties.

Early Sunday, Israeli naval commandos staged a brief ground assault in northern Gaza on a mission to destroy longer-range rockets, with the army warning residents to leave the area ahead of a major assault on the sector.

Hamas told Gazans to ignore the Israeli warnings.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior Israeli military official said the area was rife with rocket launchers and would be targeted further.

In northern Gaza, even before the army's warnings went out, thousands of residents of the blockaded coastal strip began fleeing the traumatic violence, an AFP correspondent reported.

"It was the middle of the night, and I gathered the children, they were so afraid," said Samari al-Atar, breaking down in tears as she described how her family fled barefoot with shooting all around.

Saturday's death toll was the highest yet with 56 people killed, including 18 people who died in a single strike on a house in Gaza City, medics said.

Eight people were killed in air strikes on Sunday and another two died early Monday of injuries received in earlier raids.

Pope Francis appealed to world leaders for both prayer and diplomacy to halt the bloodshed, while the German and Italian foreign ministers were both poised to head to the region to join truce efforts, their offices said.

With Palestinian civilians bearing the brunt of the violence, clashes erupted in central Paris as thousands of people protested against Israel and in support of Gazans. Protesters also rallied across Asia to condemn the Israeli offensive, with 3,000 gathering in Sydney and hundreds more in Hong Kong, New Delhi and Jakarta.

Israel has warned that preparations are under way for a possible ground incursion, with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman saying a decision was expected by Sunday.

But Israeli media said that a meeting of Netanyahu's security cabinet ended Sunday night without giving the order for ground operations.

The latest escalation began on June 12 when three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and murdered, triggering a crackdown on Hamas in the West Bank and an uptick of rocket fire from Gaza, which worsened after a Palestinian teen was killed by Jewish extremists on July 2.