GAZA CITY // Israel yesterday unleashed its heaviest bombardment of Gaza in three weeks and the only power plant in the devastated Palestinian enclave was forced to shut down as tank shells pummelled it.
Even before the power was cut off Gaza residents had electricity for only about three hours a day. Most of the power lines from Israel had already been damaged in the fighting.
The shutdown will also affect water supplies, since power is needed to operate water pumps.
Thick black plumes of smoke from the plant’s burning fuel tank filled the air for hours yesterday after two tank shells hit one of its three fuel tanks.
“We need at least one year to repair the power plant, the turbines, the fuel tanks and the control room,” said Fathi Sheik Khalil of the Gaza Energy Authority. “Everything was burned.”
He said crew members who had been trapped by the fire for several hours were evacuated.
Nearly 1,200 Palestinians have been killed since the start of fighting on July 8, including at least 100 yesterday. Israel has reported 53 soldiers and three civilians killed.
Residents of the sprawling Jebaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza reported intense tank shelling last night. Ten members of an extended family were killed and 50 other people were injured. Two brothers driving in a car with markings of a UN aid agency were killed by shrapnel.
“It was like an earthquake,” said Moussa Al Mabhouh, a volunteer for Gaza’s Civil Defence. “Roofs collapsed, walls cracked and wounded people everywhere.”
The increased bombardment a day after a day after the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned of a prolonged campaign were a new blow to international efforts to reach a sustainable truce.
Israel has vowed to stop the Hamas rocket and mortar fire that has reached increasingly deeper into its territory, and is is determined to destroy the sophisticated network of tunnels used by militants to infiltrate the Jewish state.
Hamas has rejected ceasefire efforts unless its demands, including an end to Israel’s blockade of Gaza, are met.
Already, the intensity and the scope of the war are on a par with the invasion five years ago, which ended with Israeli forces unilaterally withdrawing after a two-week assault in which they killed more than 1,400 Palestinians.
Israeli warplanes carried out dozens of airstrikes yesterday, levelling the home of the top Hamas leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, and damaging the offices of the movement’s Al Aqsa satellite TV station, a central mosque in Gaza City and government offices.
Mr Haniyeh’s house, in a narrow alley of the Shati refugee camp, was reduced to rubble but no one was hurt. Residents placed a large framed portrait of Mr Haniyeh on top of the wreckage and draped it with green Hamas flags and Palestinian national banners.
Israel has targeted several homes of Hamas leaders but none has been killed. “Destroying stones will not break our determination,” Mr Haniyeh said.
The house of the mayor of the Bureij in central Gaza was also hit in an airstrike, and five bodies were pulled from the rubble. Those killed included the mayor of a refugee camp, 50-year-old Anas Abu Shamaleh, his 70-year-old father and three relatives.
In the southern town of Rafah, seven members of one family were killed in an airstrike and seven members of a second family were killed when tank shells hit their home.
In central Gaza, seven people, including five members of one family, were killed by tank shelling on a home.
Tens of thousands of Gazans have been displaced by fighting in the border areas, which have come under heavy tank fire.
Lt Col Peter Lerner, the Israeli military spokesman, said Israel’s latest strikes signalled “a gradual increase in the pressure” on Hamas.
Israel is “determined to strike this organisation and relieve us of this threat”, he said.
In the West Bank, Yasser Abed Rabbo, the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, called for a 24-hour ceasefire after consultations with Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad group. A joint delegation headed by thye Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas would travel to Cairo to take the next step, he said.
Izzat Rishq, a senior Hamas official in exile, said his group wanted to hear from Israel first. Israel government spokesman Mark Regev declined to comment.
International calls for an unconditional ceasefire have also been mounting, but both sides have been holding out for bigger gains.
Hamas has said it will not stop fighting until it wins international guarantees that the crippling border blockade of Gaza will be lifted. Israel and Egypt imposed the closure after Hamas seized Gaza in 2007, defeating forces loyal to Mr Abbas. Over the past year, Egypt has further tightened restrictions, shutting down hundreds of smuggling tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border that had provide crucial tax income to Hamas. The closure of the tunnels drove Hamas into a severe financial crisis.
Israel has said it is defending its citizens against attack from Gaza by hitting Hamas rocket launchers, weapons storage sites and military tunnels under the Gaza-Israel border.
Israel said its troops will not leave Gaza until they have demolished the tunnels which have been used by Hamas to sneak into Israel to carry out attacks.
* Associated Press