The Israeli army release footage it says shows gunmen tunnelling into Israel. A military source says that Israeli forces repelled at least a dozen Hamas gunmen who tunnelled in from the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli aircraft struck the fighters at the mouth of the tunnel some 820 feet inside Israel, near the Sufa kibbutz. Israeli President Shimon Peres said that the incident highlights Hamas’ militant motives.
“Hamas prepared a plan to kill as many people in Israel, in two ways. One by firing rockets through the skies and other by sending soldiers through tunnels that they have cut and they can appear in the open in the heart of civilian life,” Mr Peres said.
Mr Peres also commented on the death of four children in Gaza during an Israeli airstrike the day before and said Israel doesn’t intend to kill civilians and takes precautions to avoid such deaths.
“There are many cases were the pilots identified children and did not fire in order not to harm them,” he said.
Channel 4 News Foreign Correspondent Jonathan Miller on Thursday returned to the place where four boys died in an Israeli attack on a beach in Gaza.
Palestinians rushed to shops and banks on Thursday during a five-hour humanitarian ceasefire that largely held, and an Israeli official said Egypt had proposed a permanent truce that would start on Friday.
But there was uncertainty about prospects for a full cessation of violence after the temporary truce lapsed.
Sirens sounded in southern Israel at 3pm at the end of the five-hour ceasefire, and the military said a rocket had been fired at the cities of Ashkelon and Beersheba.
During Thursday’s period of relative calm, the Israeli military said three mortar bombs were launched into Israel from the Gaza Strip, landing in open areas.
Israeli forces, the military added, fired mortar rounds into the Palestinian territory during the truce period after a soldier was slightly wounded by a blast near the frontier.
Gaza health officials say at least 224 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed. In Israel, one civilian has been killed by fire from Gaza, where the Israeli military says more than 1,300 rockets have been launched into the Jewish state.
#c4news #Gaza the beach across which the boys fled after the first strike. 2nd killed them as they ran pic.twitter.com/Ru7rJYnEO6
— Jonathan Miller (@millerC4) July 17, 2014