Airstrikes pummel Gaza Strip

Death toll rises to 585 Palestinians, 29 from Israel in two-week conflict

Israeli airstrikes hammered a wide range of targets in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, including five mosques, as an Israeli soldier is missing following a deadly battle in Gaza and diplomatic efforts intensified to end more than two weeks of fighting that has killed at least 585 Palestinians and 29 Israelis.

Israeli aircraft hit more than 150 targets, including the home of the late leader of Hamas' military wing, five mosques and a sports complex, Gaza police spokesman Ayman Batniji said. There were no casualties in the mosques or at the sports complex, which includes a gym, three martial arts studios and a soccer field.

An Israeli defense official said the soldier went missing after a deadly battle in Gaza over the weekend and it was not immediately clear if he was dead or alive. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the incident with media.

The development adds a further complication to international efforts to broker a truce. United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon and United States Secretary of State John Kerry met in Cairo on Monday to launch the highest-level push yet to end the deadly conflict. The UN has said that the majority of the Palestinians killed were civilians, among them dozens of children.

Israel said its campaign, launched on July 8, was aimed at stopping Hamas rocket fire into Israel - some 2,000 rockets had been launched over the past two weeks, the military said - and destroying tunnels the military says Hamas has constructed from Gaza into Israel for attacks against Israelis. Overnight, Israel bombed five mosques, a sports complex and the home of a late Hamas military chief, a Gaza police official said.

The airstrikes set off huge explosions that turned the night sky over Gaza City orange early on Tuesday. The sound of the blasts mixed with the thud of shelling, often just seconds apart, and the pre-dawn call to prayer from mosque loudspeakers.

Journalists evacuate

Dozens of journalists and residents of a central Gaza City high-rise evacuated from the building after an Al-Jazeera correspondent said it was hit by Israeli gunfire on Tuesday. The correspondent, Tamer al-Misshal, said two bullets hit the building, one puncturing a window.

"We are sure the firing came from Israel and not from Hamas," al-Misshal said. Mark Regev, the spokesman for Israel's prime minister, said "Israel does not target journalists."

Tank shells also damaged several houses along the eastern border of the territory, Batniji said. At least 19 fishing boats were burned by Israeli navy shells fired from the Mediterranean Sea, he added.

Six upper floors of a Gaza high-rise collapsed onto the two lower stories, buckling them into rubble. At the scene, construction company owner Ehab Batch, 40, and several of his workers were trying to retrieve documents from what had once been the company's 2nd floor offices.

Batch, who said he had no work in the past year because Egypt had blocked border tunnels that bring in construction material, said Gaza needs an immediate cease-fire and a deal that would open all border crossing points.

"We need Gaza people to have a (normal) life, as all the people in the world," Batch said.

Reports of a missing soldier invoked Hamas' claims earlier this week that it had captured an Israeli soldier. Israel's UN ambassador initially denied the claim but the military neither confirmed nor denied it.

For Israelis, a captured soldier would be a nightmare scenario and Israel has paid a heavy price to retrieve soldiers - dead or alive - captured by its enemies.

Israel feels a strong need not to leave any of its soldiers behind, including the remains of dead ones, and has engaged in lopsided prisoner swaps with its foes to bring home captured soldiers. In 2008, Israel released five Lebanese militants in exchange for the remains of two soldiers killed in the 2006 Lebanon war.

(China Daily 07/23/2014 page11)