UN calls for ceasefire as Gaza death toll soars

Number of Palestinian dead approaches 140 as Israelis continue to hammer heavily populated areas.

Red Crescent ambulance drivers and medical staff with Ayman Shahwan, who went into shock near the Gaza-Israeli border after being injured in an Israeli airstrike. Heidi Levine for The National

RAFAH, GAZA STRIP // The United Nations called for a ceasefire in the hostilities between Israelis and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on Saturday.

All 15 members of the security council called in a statement for a de-escalation of the violence and for direct negotiations between the two sides to resume. The statement is not legally binding and is meant to reflect international opinion.

Earlier on Saturday, the Palestinian death toll in Gaza rose to 135 as Israel continued to strike at targets in the territory, including a centre for disabled women.

At least 22 people were killed on the fifth day of an operation to stop rockets from being fired into Israel from the Hamas-run territory. The head of Gaza’s emergency medical services said more than 950 people had been injured altogether.

The high civilian toll from the artillery and air force strikes on Gaza’s densely packed neighbourhoods has prompted international calls for Israel to halt its attacks.

However, the Israeli defence minister Moshe Yaalon indicated after a meeting with top security officials on Saturday that the strikes would not stop anytime soon.

Israel has also mobilised tens of thousands of troops for a possible ground assault on Gaza.

“We have accumulated achievements as far as the price Hamas is paying and we are continuing to destroy significant targets of it and other terror organisations,” he said.

“We will continue to punish it until quiet and security returns to southern Israel and the rest of the country.”

Among the targets hit on Saturday was a mosque that Israel said was being used to store rockets.

Hamas said it hoped the mosque attack would galvanise support for it in the Muslim world.

“[It] shows how barbaric this enemy is and how much it is hostile to Islam,” said Husam Badran, a Hamas spokesman in Doha, Qatar. “This terrorism gives us the right to broaden our response to deter this occupier.”

Retaliatory rocket fire from Gaza, meanwhile, hit in and near two cities in the southern West Bank on Saturday, the army said.

“One rocket struck an urban area in Hebron and two other rockets struck the area of Bethlehem,” said an Israel Defense Forces statement. And on Saturday night Gaza militants fired rockets at Tel Aviv, the army said, with media reporting that four were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system.

Two explosions were heard in Jerusalem shortly after air raid sirens sounded.

Arab League foreign ministers will hold a special session in Kuwait on Monday to urge the international community to halt the fighting. and Mideast Quartet envoy Tony Blair arrived in Cairo on Saturday for talks with officials on the crisis.

The outbreak of violence follows the abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank last month, and the kidnapping and killing of a Palestinian teenager in an apparent revenge attack.

No Israelis have been killed by the rockets fired from Gaza so far, but have reached as far north as Haifa, causing mass panic.

The military said Israel had been struck by 542 Gaza-fired rockets while another 139 have been intercepted by the country’s Iron Dome missile-defence system. The navy and air force have bombarded 1,220 targets in Gaza, pulverising houses in densely populated neighbourhoods and killing entire families.

Among the casualties on Saturday were two patients killed in an attack on a charity association in the city Beit Lahiya that specialises in treating disabled women.

Medical officials and ambulance drivers in Gaza say Egyptian restrictions have prevented them from sending critically wounded Palestinians for more advanced treatment in Cairo.

“In the past, we would have sent many of these patients directly to Egypt, but now we can’t,” said Wissam Nabhan, a spokesman at the Gaza European Hospital in the city of Khan Younis.

Egypt tightened controls on its Rafah crossing with Gaza after the country’s military deposed Mohammed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood member and ideological ally of Hamas, as president last July.

The pedestrian crossing at Rafah has been opened twice during the current round of fighting, on Thursday and Saturday. Only 11 wounded Palestinians were allowed to cross to Egypt on Thursday and three more as of 2pm yesterday.

“I don’t know why Egypt is doing this, but we are suffering here,” said Khaled Shaer, general director of the Palestinian side of the Rafah Crossing. He said the ambulances that Egypt had agreed to let in were forced to wait for extended periods before being allowed to cross.

“A lot of the Egyptian officers are not co-operating with us,” he said.

Enas Al Saqa, 37, said she was desperate to take her 14-year-old daughter to Cairo, where they live, for cancer treatment.

Mrs Saqa had come to Gaza with her children last month for her father’s funeral, but was trapped by the war.

Egyptian authorities are denyingentry, giving multiple and changing reasons for preventing her and her daughter from leaving.

“Every day they delay her from her treatment, I feel like she loses another year of her life,” said Mrs Saqa. “We’re human beings.”

Hospitals that used to send patients for emergency treatment to Egypt during previous conflicts are being forced to deal with the cases themselves or send them to Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. However, drugs and medical supplies such as gauzes and splints are in short supply because of restricted access to the territory by Israel and Egypt, medical officials said.

Egypt, which mediated a ceasefire after the last flare-up in fighting in November 2012, appears to have little interest in halting the fighting this time around.

Israeli forces earlier invaded Gaza during a three-week war beginning at the end of 2008 that proved to be a public relations disaster for the country, which along with Hamas was accused of committing war crimes.

As many as 1,400 Palestinians were killed in that round of fighting, and another 5,000 wounded. There were 13 Israeli deaths.

* With additional reporting by Agence France-Press