Region

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM/CAIRO — Israel insisted Monday there will be no end to its bloody military campaign in Gaza without achieving long-term security for its people, shunning increasingly vocal world demands for a truce.

Meanwhile, Egypt is pressing for a 72-hour Gaza ceasefire to be held Tuesday, Palestinian officials said, just hours after Hamas accused Israel of trying to scuttle Cairo truce talks.

Palestinian delegates in Cairo, including members of Hamas and President Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority, on Sunday agreed joint demands for a planned truce with Israel, including an end to the Gaza blockade.

“Egypt is leading international efforts for a 72-hour humanitarian truce and a mutual ceasefire starting 8am (0500 GMT) tomorrow,” one of them said Monday.

The delegate  added that all Palestinian factions had accepted the proposal.

Another delegate, Islamic Jihad representative Ziad El Nakhale, told Palestinian radio: “Maybe in the next few hours we will announce a ceasefire.”

Images of the bloodshed in Gaza, which has claimed more than 1,800 Palestinian lives and 67 in Israel, have sent tensions soaring across the region, earning Israel strong criticism for the soaring numbers of civilian casualties.

“How many more deaths will it take to stop what must be called the carnage in Gaza?” asked French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there would be no end without first securing a long-term period of calm for his people.

“The campaign in Gaza is continuing,” he said at the end of a seven-hour humanitarian lull which saw violence subside in the battered Palestinian enclave.

“This operation will only end when quiet and security is established for the citizens of Israel for a prolonged period.”

Violence also erupted in Jerusalem, with Israeli forces saying they had foiled a “terror attack” after a Palestinian rammed an earthmover into a bus, killing one and wounding five before being shot dead himself.

Shortly afterwards, a soldier was shot and badly wounded near a bus stop not far from the site of the earlier attack by a gunman who fled, with Israeli forces combing the area to find him.

Meanwhile on the ground, Israel troops, which had begun withdrawing from besieged enclave at the weekend, largely held their fire in Gaza during a unilateral seven-hour truce, which began at 0700 GMT.

The humanitarian window got off to a shaky start with an air strike levelling a house in a beachfront refugee camp in Gaza City, killing three people, among them a nine-year-old girl, the emergency services said.

The strike cause the house to pancake, leaving a huge pile of rubble strewn with twisted metal rods and broken glass and only a very narrow gap for rescuers to get inside.

“There is no truce. How could there be a truce,” raged Ayman Mahmud, who lives in the neighbourhood.

“They are liars! They don’t even respect their own commitments!”

Hamas did not observe the truce, firing 42 rockets over the border during the pause, 24 of which hit Israel and another one which was shot down, the army said.

And Gaza medics said they retrieved 32 bodies from the rubble.

A military spokesman later said troops were resuming their operations, “including air strikes” but said they were also continuing to redeploy within Gaza while others were pulling out.

Truce follows pressure 

The unilateral truce was announced as international outrage grew over an Israeli strike near a UN school on Sunday that killed 10 people, among them refugees who had been seeking shelter.

It was the third such strike in 10 days.

With UN figures indicating most of the 1,865 people killed in Gaza so far were civilians, the world has stepped up its demands for an end to the bloodshed.

In Paris, France’s top diplomat, an increasingly vocal critic of the war, demanded the world impose a political solution to end “the carnage”.

“Israel’s right to security is total, but this right does not justify the killing of children and the slaughter of civilians,” he said, with French President Francois Hollande urging an end to the “massacres” in Gaza.

Their remarks came a day after the UN denounced a fresh strike on one of its schools which was sheltering 3,000 refugees as “a moral outrage and a criminal act”, and the United States said it was “appalled”.

Israel acknowledged targeting three fighters near the school and said it was investigating the consequences of the strike.

Russia’s top diplomat Sergei Lavrov also added his voice to growing calls for an agreement to end the violence, his ministry said Monday.

In Cairo, truce talks between a Palestinian delegation and Egyptian officials were ongoing.

Israel turned down an invitation to attend, with Hamas accusing Israel of attempting to scuttle the talks in a bid to avoid blame for its “escalating massacres” in Gaza.

The Palestinians want Israel withdraw all troops from Gaza, end its eight-year blockade of the enclave and open border crossings.

GAZA/OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — An Israeli air strike killed 10 people and wounded about 30 on Sunday in a UN-run school in the southern Gaza Strip, a Palestinian official said, as dozens died in Israeli shelling of the enclave and Hamas fired rockets at Israel.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon described the attack as a “moral outrage and a criminal act” and called for those responsible for the “gross violation of international humanitarian law” to be held accountable.

The United States was “appalled by today’s disgraceful shelling” and urged Israel to do more to prevent civilian casualties, according to a statement by State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki. She also called for an investigation into recent attacks on UN schools.

It was the second strike on a school in less than a week.

The Israeli military said it had “targeted three Islamic Jihad fighters on board a motorcycle in the vicinity of an UNRWA school in Rafah” and added it was “reviewing the consequences of this strike”.

Islamic Jihad did not report any of its fighters killed or injured in the incident. A Palestinian health official said all those wounded or killed were from inside the school.

Amid Hamas accusations that Israel had misled the world about the alleged capture of an Israeli soldier, the officer, Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, was buried on Sunday after the military said it recovered remains and he was killed in action.

Goldin’s suspected abduction led to the collapse of a US- and UN-brokered ceasefire on Friday. In Cairo, efforts to find a new truce were due to resume on Sunday.

Troop movements

Israeli media, on the 27th day of the fighting, reported that most Israeli troops had pulled out of Gaza. Reuters TV footage showed a column of Israeli tanks and dozens of infantrymen leaving the enclave.

An Israeli military spokesman stopped short of calling the move a withdrawal, but said residents from some evacuated Gaza neighbourhoods had been told by the army they could return.

“The troops are in the midst of a redeployment to other parts of the border,” said Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner.

“Indeed we are releasing troops from the front line but the mission is ongoing,” he said. “Ground forces are operating. Air forces are operating.”

In the town of Rafah, where the military has been battling fighters, a missile from an Israeli aircraft struck the entrance to the UN-run school, where Palestinians who had fled their homes were sheltering, witnesses and medics said.

Ashraf Al Qidra, spokesman for the Gaza health ministry, said 10 people had been killed and 30 wounded, all from inside the school.

Robert Serry, UN Middle East Special Coordinator, said the school had been sheltering 3,000 displaced persons and the strike caused multiple deaths and injuries.

“It is simply intolerable that another school has come under fire while designated to provide shelter for civilians fleeing the hostilities,” he said.

Last Wednesday, at least 15 Palestinians, who sought refuge in a UN-run school in Jabalya refugee camp, were killed during fighting, and the UN said Israeli artillery had apparently hit the building. The Israeli military said gunmen had fired mortar bombs from near the school and it shot back in response.

Pressure

Earlier on Sunday, Israeli shelling killed at least 30 people in Gaza, a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to keep up pressure on Hamas even after the army completes its core mission of destroying a tunnel network used by Palestinian fighters to attack Israel.

Netanyahu says Gaza’s dominant Hamas faction bears ultimate responsibility for civilian casualties, accusing gunmen and rocket-launching squads of using residents in densely populated areas as “human shields”.

In Rafah, Fateh faction leader and local resident Ashraf Goma said locals were unable to deal with the casualties.

“Bodies of the wounded are bleeding in the streets and other corpses are laid on the road with no one able to recover them.

“I saw a man on a donkey cart bringing seven bodies into the hospital. Bodies are being kept in ice-cream refrigerators, in flower and vegetable coolers,” Goma told Reuters.

The Israeli army said that more than 55 rockets had been fired from Gaza at Israel on Sunday. Shrapnel from a rocket shot down by Israel’s Iron Dome interceptor fell inside a playground in the Tel Aviv area but caused no injury, media reports said.

Israeli troops had discovered a cache of 150 mortar bombs in the southern Gaza Strip. They had clashed with Palestinian fighters who emerged from a tunnel and with others preparing to launch an anti-tank missile from a house in the area, a military statement said.

Israel began its offensive against Gaza on July 8 following a surge of cross-border rocket salvoes by Hamas and other fighters.

The fighting on Sunday pushed the Gaza death toll given by Palestinian officials to 1,775, most of them civilians. Israel has confirmed that 64 soldiers have died in combat, while Palestinian rockets have also killed three civilians in Israel.

Truce efforts

In new truce moves, a delegation from Hamas and the Islamic Jihad group arrived in the Egyptian capital, but a quick breakthrough seemed unlikely in the absence of Israeli representatives.

After accusing Hamas of breaching Friday’s short-lived ceasefire, Israel said it would not send envoys as scheduled.

Israel says it wants Gaza demilitarised under any long-term arrangement.

Hamas, sworn to Israel’s destruction, demands Israel withdraw its troops and a lifting of Israeli and Egyptian blockades that have choked Gaza’s economy.

A Palestinian official said Palestinian representatives in Cairo had formulated a joint paper listing those conditions as well as demands for the release of Hamas prisoners held by Israel and the start of a Gaza reconstruction process.

In Gaza, Israel intensified attacks in the area of Rafah along the border with Egypt, where Goldin had been feared captured on Friday. Hamas described Israeli shelling in the town as unjustified retribution for what the group said was a false accusation that the officer had been abducted.

Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said Goldin was a relative of his. “He and other soldiers who fell embarked on the campaign to restore quiet and security to Israel,” he said.

The Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, said three dozen tunnels had been unearthed and destroyed and “we are finishing up de-commissioning these tunnels”.

“We hope that that job will be completed in a matter of hours, not days,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press”.

TRIPOLI — The exodus of foreigners from Libya gathered pace Sunday as the government said at least 22 people were killed in clashes in Tripoli and warned of a “worsening humanitarian situation”.

Thousands of Egyptians seeking to flee the strife-torn North African country were being airlifted home after being allowed into neighbouring Tunisia, many after a wait of several days at a border crossing.

And a British navy ship was evacuating Britons from Tripoli, the defence ministry in London said.

The latest flare-up, which broke out on Saturday, takes the death toll in Tripoli to 124 since July 13, with more than 500 wounded.

A medical source said the weekend casualty figures of 22 dead and 72 wounded did not cover hospitals outside Tripoli, in particular in the town of Misrata which has sent fighters to the capital.

The transitional government said “several hundred” families had been displaced and there was a “worsening humanitarian situation” in Tripoli, where petrol, bottled gas and food supplies are scarce.

On Sunday, the city centre was livelier than in past days despite the renewed fighting around the airport to the south.

However, most shops and banks were shut and the sky was filled with black smoke from a fuel depot ravaged by a fire resulting from the clashes of the past two weeks.

Tripoli airport has been closed and several aircraft destroyed or damaged in the clashes between rival militias which fought together in 2011 to help overthrow dictator Muammar Qadhafi.

The unrest is seen as a struggle for influence, both between regions and political factions, as Libya plunges into chaos, with authorities failing to control the dozens of militias in the absence of a structured regular army and police force.

In Tunisia, buses started on Saturday to pick up Egyptian evacuees at the Ras Jedir border crossing to take them to Jerba airport, 100 kilometres north, for flights back to Egypt, AFP journalists said.

Egypt’s civil aviation minister, Hossam Kamal, said 1,796 people had been taken to Jerba and another 1,355 were to be transferred there on Sunday, with five flights home planned.

As of Saturday evening, about 6,000 people were awaiting evacuation and neither Libya, Egypt nor Tunisia could say on Sunday how many were still awaiting transport.

“The humanitarian situation is critical, as some people haven’t eaten for five or six days,” Red Cross official Mongi Slim told AFP on the phone.

“The authorities have allowed us to provide them with food.”

Tunisia had refused to admit people who were neither Libyan nor Tunisian unless they could prove they would be immediately repatriated and were only transiting the country.

The government said it could not cope with a large number of Arab or Asian workers fleeing Libya as it did during the anti-Qadhafi armed revolt of 2011.

The Ras Jedir crossing was shut on Friday and part of Saturday after violent clashes between Libyan border guards and hundreds of Egyptians who had tried to storm the border post.

On Sunday, the crossing was operating normally.

Since mid-July, Libya has seen deadly clashes been rival militias in both Tripoli and the eastern city of Benghazi.

Tripoli airport has been closed since gunmen, mostly Islamists, attacked it in a bid to wrest control from the Zintan brigade of former rebels who have held it since the 2011 revolt.

Britain’s defence ministry, meanwhile, said HMS Enterprise, which had been on a Mediterranean deployment, arrived off Tripoli on Sunday.

“A number of passengers were transferred to Enterprise by boat and given supplies for the journey,” it added.

A foreign ministry spokesman said that most of those being evacuated from Tripoli, believed to number around 100, were British.

Britain is also planning to temporarily suspend its embassy operations in the North African country.

Michael Aron, Britain’s ambassador in Tripoli, said Friday he had “reluctantly” decided to leave because of the worsening security situation.

BERLIN — Israel eavesdropped on US Secretary of State John Kerry during doomed peace talks with the Palestinians last year, German news weekly Der Spiegel reported Sunday.

The article said the Israelis and at least one other secret service listened in on Kerry’s conversations as he tried to mediate, in a development that Der Spiegel said was likely to further strain ties between Israel and the United States.

Kerry regularly spoke by telephone with high-ranking officials throughout the Middle East during the negotiations that finally collapsed earlier this year.

Spiegel, which cited “several sources among secret services”, said that he used not only secure lines but also normal telephones with satellite connections which were vulnerable to tapping.

“The government in Jerusalem used this information in the negotiations on a diplomatic solution in the Middle East,” it said.

Spiegel said Kerry’s office and the Israeli government declined to comment on its report.

Kerry made reviving Middle East diplomacy a central priority at the start of his term and coaxed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas back to the negotiating table in July 2013.

But in April this year, Israel made a surprise announcement of plans for 700 new settlements and refused to free a last batch of Palestinian prisoners after earlier releases. Abbas in turn sought Palestinian membership in 15 UN conventions and the peace drive eventually broke down.

Kerry has attempted to mediate during the current Israeli military offensive in Gaza and flew to Israel last week.

But he has failed to bring about a lasting truce in the 26-day confrontation that has claimed more than 1,700 lives.

WASHINGTON — Thousands of protesters, many wrapped in Palestinian flags, rallied outside the White House on Saturday to call for peace and an end to the fighting in Gaza.

The crowd, young and old from across the United States, including scores of children on parents’ shoulders, chanted “End US Aid to Israel” and “Israel out of Palestine”.

Many wore headscarves or traditional Palestinian keffiyeh scarves.

“Gaza will not die — it will never die,” said Amar Jamal as he marched through downtown Washington with his family surrounded by a sea of red, black, white and green, the colours of the Palestinians’ flag.

“It is the time to make peace because this bloodbath will not stop in Gaza. All the Middle East will be in trouble” if the conflict doesn’t end, warned the Palestinian-born 70-year-old.

‘Stop funding murder’ 

Many of the protesters voiced anger at Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, after he vowed to keep up his military campaign against Gaza’s Islamist rulers Hamas for as long and as forcefully as needed.

One protester waved a banner that read “Netanyahu and Hitler are the same, the only difference is the name”.

Others demanded that Washington end its military backing of Israel and take its ally to task over a conflict that has already killed more than 1,700 Palestinians and 66 Israelis, all but two of them soldiers.

Shereen Abdel-Nabi, holding her young son who was wearing a “Jesus is Palestinian” T-shirt, said the “US should stop military aid to Israel and use stronger words in condemning its action”.

“I really think this is a turning point ... it’s an issue of humanity. The US government is proving to be on the wrong side of history on this one,” the 34-year-old added.

Remembering the dead 

Sam Khalaf, a Palestinian American from Maryland, felt the need to march to show “solidarity” for relatives in the West Bank and Gaza.

“Marching is the least we can do when people are dying,” said Khalaf, 33.

Friends Waleh Kanan and Jasmine Abuhummos, both 15, travelled for hours overnight from Toledo, Ohio.

“A lot of people are ignorant about what is going on. So we hope this will help get more of the truth out,” said Kanan.

A woman who identified herself as Mary was held back by police as she yelled “stop supporting terror” and brandished an Israeli flag poster towards pro-Palestinian protesters.

CNN reported that a small group of Orthodox Jews held a counter-demonstration that led to a minor scuffle.

Organisers claimed that as many as 50,000 people participated in the afternoon rally.

Police did not immediately respond to requests for official estimates.

Alli McCracken, National Coordinator of the anti-war group CODEPINK, a co-sponsor of the event, said spirits were high “even though there’s a massacre going on”.

Protests were also held in other US cities, including in Los Angeles, where demonstrators lay down on the ground in front of the Israeli Consulate.

JABALIYA, Palestinian Territories — Ask any child in Gaza to do a drawing and the resulting picture is likely to be a house being bombed by a fighter plane.

In the strife-torn Palestinian enclave, thousands of children are suffering from the trauma of war but resources to help them are scarce.

At a school in the northern town of Jabaliya which has been converted into a refuge, specialist teachers hand out paper and coloured crayons to a motley band of shaken up children, asking them to draw whatever is in their head.

Jamal Diab, a nine-year-old with red flecks in his brown hair, draws his dead grandfather. Under the drawing, he writes in Arabic: “I am sad because of the martyrs.”

“A few days ago, aircraft bombarded our house. We had to leave quickly and leave everything behind. It was dangerous,” the lad breathes timidly as he shows his drawing.

Tiny seven-year old Bara Marouf shows a drawing of his grandfather without any legs. He was seriously wounded in an air strike.

In the classroom, the same sketch comes up repeatedly: An aircraft filling the sky and bombarding a house, subtitled with the caption “I want to go home”.

“Who is afraid of aircraft?” the teacher asks the children sitting in a circle on a mat.

Immediately little hands push towards the sky and high-pitched voices clamour: “Me”, “me”, “me”.

“Me, I’m afraid of missiles and planes. Half our house was destroyed. We left it to come here,” explains Itimad Subh, an 11-year-old girl with sparkling eyes.

‘They blame themselves’ 

According to the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, about 300 children have been killed since the start on July 8 of Israel’s offensive against Hamas fighters firing rockets into Israel.

Those who are still alive try not to internalise too much the violence they have experienced, seen and heard.

Inside the school, groups of youths attend half-hour sessions one after the other.

The two teachers, patient and exhausted, their faces enclosed in a tight veil, ask the children to jump on the spot and call out, then to wave their arms like someone disco dancing, to expel accumulated black thoughts, frustration and stress.

“The children have all lived extreme experiences,” says Dr. Iyad Zaqut, a psychiatrist who manages the United Nations community mental health programmes in the Gaza Strip.

“It is very difficult for children to grasp what is happening, why their life is at risk, why they have to leave their homes, why they have to resettle, why they witness very traumatising scenes,” Zaqut said.

“To prevent children from processing and thinking about all these issues, we try to distract them, to help them live some joy, to have a little fun inside the shelter.

“Generally, when they are exposed to traumatic events, the way they perceive the incident can be very distorted, they might blame themselves, they might blame their neighbours and this blaming is very harmful,” the psychiatrist said.

“We try to reprocess these distorted ideas,” he explained, noting that he has diagnosed cases of post-traumatic stress and adolescent depression.

No therapy in wartime 

But it is hard to make much progress with the therapy.

In the Gaza Strip, 460,000 people — more than a quarter of the population — have been displaced by the fighting and have gone to stay with relatives or found refuge at UN shelters.

Fewer than 100 specialist teachers are “treating” more than 100,000 children.

Only in exceptional cases do the children have access to one-on-one meetings with psychologists and psychiatrists. And even fewer get a follow up.

Gaza has been in the firing line of military operations in 2008-2009 and again in 2012 but the consequences have been greater during this current war between Israel and Hamas.

UNICEF estimates that 326,000 minors in Gaza are in need of psychological help.

The children and adolescents sheltering in the UN centres can at least attend the group classes but hundreds of thousands of others affected by the war are left to wander unhelped through devastated neighbourhoods.

TRIPOLI — Libya has warned of a “total collapse” of its healthcare system as the chaos plaguing the country threatens to send into flight many of the Filipino and Indian staff on whom its hospitals depend.

Fighting between rival militias in Tripoli over the past three weeks and bloody clashes between Islamists and army special forces in the eastern city of Benghazi have prompted several countries to evacuate their nationals and diplomatic staff.

Now, 3,000 health workers from the Philippines, making up 60 per cent of Libya’s hospital staff, could leave — along with workers from India, who account for another 20 per cent.

Libyan hospitals, meanwhile, are flooded with a wave of admissions, victims of the fighting which has shaken the capital and Benghazi.

In Tripoli, at least 102 people have been killed and 452 wounded in the clashes that began on July 13, the health ministry said Wednesday.

It said 77 people have been killed and 289 wounded in Benghazi’s violence.

Manila already urged its citizens in Libya to leave on July 20 after a kidnapped Filipino worker was found beheaded.

Of the estimated 13,000 Filipinos in Libya, only around 700 heeded the warning and left. The rest refused to abandon their jobs despite the dangers.

But Manila said Thursday it would charter ferries to evacuate its nationals, a day after a Filipina nurse was kidnapped and gang raped in Tripoli.

Hundreds of Filipino doctors and nurses in Tripoli’s Medical Centre walked out in protest at the savage attack on their colleague, unleashing anarchy in the hospital.

Families were forced to transfer sick relatives to private clinics, a hospital official said.

“Hospitals could be paralysed” in the event of the mass-departure of Philippine nationals, health ministry spokesman Ammar Mohamed said, while authorities warned of a possible “total collapse” of the healthcare system.

A medical official said the ministry was trying to persuade the Filipinos to stay.

Complicating the situation further are the difficulties faced by Libyan staff as they struggle to keep work hours.

Mohamed said Libyan doctors and carers have been struggling to reach their workplace from home because of fighting around the capital and fuel shortages.

Airport closed 

Faced with the deteriorating situation at home, Health Minister Nureddin Doghman has instructed Tripoli’s missions in Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Turkey, Italy, Greece and Germany to organise the transport and care for Libyans needing treatment, to be paid for by Tripoli.

But the closure of Libya’s airports in Tripoli and Benghazi because of the unrest has made medical transfers even more difficult.

“My brother spent several days in hospital after suffering a stroke. His health deteriorated day after day and the doctors told us he should be treated in Tunisia, but we could find no way to transfer him there,” said Ahmed Drughi, a Tripoli resident.

“In the end we had to use contacts to find him a place on a medical plane flying out of Misrata,” 200 kilometres east of the capital.

Even in peacetime, Libya’s health services were understaffed and under-equipped, and tens of thousands of Libyans travelled abroad for treatment, mostly to neighbouring Tunisia and Egypt.

In Benghazi, two out of three of the city’s main hospitals have shut.

Al Jala Hospital closed several weeks ago, as the army and an Islamist militia tussle to control it. Al Houari Hospital has been closed for months, after being flooded by sewage because of construction errors.

Only Benghazi Medical Centre remains operational, but its capacity has been limited to 300 beds, compared with 1,200 in normal times.

“The centre is hit by a lack of doctors and carers, particularly after the departure of the foreigners,” said spokesman Moataz Al Majbari.

Many patients have had to be transferred elsewhere and have wound up in poorly-equipped clinics in neighbouring towns.

AL BUREIJ, Palestinian Territories — After bombardment gutted his home in central Gaza, Nidal Al Khaldi says he has nothing left to lose and will support the “resistance” against Israel even if it means more vicious fighting.

“This war will continue!” he declares, standing by the ruins of his house in Al Bureij district during a temporary lull in fighting Friday between Israel and Gaza’s fighters.

The relative calm does not last long, as shelling resumes just hours into an agreed 72-hour humanitarian ceasefire, and as Israel says militants had probably captured one of its soldiers in “breach” of the truce.

In Al Bureij, the streets are carpeted with dust and rubble, riddled with shards of metal and twists of electric cable, the desolate heritage of 25 days of devastating and deadly fighting.

Young men scoop up lumps of concrete which only yesterday were the wall of a house. A man transports a wounded goat in a cart.

Nearby, in the hospital, rescue workers place cadavers including the bodies of two children into the morgue’s irregularly powered refrigerators.

Unemployed Nidal, his dark beard still closely trimmed, wanders through the ruins of his house.

The previous night, just before the supposed three-day truce began, “enemy” tanks bombarded the neighbourhood, the 42-year-old tells AFP.

“Because of them, we no longer have a house. We were seven families living here but we are all on the street.

“All the same, this war will certainly continue, I don’t have a problem with that. Let the resistance continue,” Khaldi said.

“We have 1,500 martyrs and what has the international community done? Nothing, absolutely nothing. We are living in an open-air prison.

“Israel destroys our houses, kills our children and even our animals. Absolutely, someone should do something,” he adds.

“We are ready to sacrifice our houses and our children for victory.”

As the bombardment begins again, the heavy thump of tank fire pervades the heart of Gaza’s urban communities.

Ambulances with sirens blaring zigzag their way through the destruction.

“Here there is no truce, only tanks. Bombs rain down. Every two minutes, Israeli tanks bombard us,” rages 28-year-old Mourad in Zanna, on the outskirts of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza.

“People are still trapped under the rubble, barely 15 metres from here. We can hear their calls but we can’t go there for the moment. It’s too dangerous,” adds Mourad, surrounded by around 20 other young men, all convinced the confrontation will go on and on.

“We simply have too many martyrs. There is no other choice but for this war to continue,” one of them says.

Farther away, in Rafah, near the Egyptian border, Palestinians state their firm belief in “victory”, which can only mean more deaths.

Outside a Gaza City hospital where new bodies are already filling the morgues, Mussleh attests: “Resistance is stronger than ever and it is strengthening all the time.”

TOBRUK, Libya — Libya’s newly elected house of representatives held its first session on Saturday, holed up in a heavily guarded provincial hotel as armed factions turned the two biggest cities, Tripoli and Benghazi, into battlefields.

Western governments, who have mostly evacuated their diplomats after two weeks of fighting, hope the new parliament can create space for negotiations after the worst clashes since the 2011 war that ousted Muammar Qadhafi.

But there was no sign of a let up in the capital Tripoli where a huge cloud of black smoke spread over the south of the city once again on Saturday after a fuel depot near the international airport was hit for the second time in a week as rival Zintan and Misrata brigades battled for control.

Fighting with rockets, anti-aircraft cannon and other heavy artillery in Tripoli and the eastern city of Benghazi has killed more than 200 people, and edged Libya closer to full-scale civil war just three years after the NATO-backed revolution.

Britain became the latest Western government to announce it would close its embassy, fearing being caught in the crossfire.

With its national army still in formation, Libya has struggled to control heavily armed factions that have entrenched themselves as de facto power brokers in the messy transition since Qadhafi’s one-man rule.

Elected in June, lawmakers met on Saturday for an emergency session in Tobruk, a coastal city east of Benghazi, where they are supposed to form a new government that many Libyans hope will be a step to ending the crisis.

“Our homeland is burning,” Abu Bakar Baira, interim head of parliament said. “We have to work fast, to meet the demands of the people and save them from this disaster.”

The 200-member parliament will hold its first official session to elect its new president on Monday, Baira said. Some deputies aim to form a new cabinet to handle the crisis, three of them told Reuters.

Three years after Qadhafi’s demise, few Libyan state institutions have popular legitimacy and the country still has no new constitution. Militias stormed the last parliament repeatedly to threaten lawmakers.

Heavily armed interior ministry troops and the Libyan army protected the Tobruk hotel that was chosen to host the parliament meeting after Tripoli and Benghazi were deemed too risky.

Western countries are worried Libya’s escalating conflict could create a failed state just across the Mediterranean from mainland Europe. Fearing the violence could spill beyond Libya’s borders, neighbours Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria all warn of the danger a failed Libya would pose.

Hundreds of Egyptians clashed on Friday with Tunisian border guards when they tried to force their way out of Libya, fleeing the fighting in Tripoli. Tunisia temporarily closed its frontier with Libya.

Two cities in clashes

Brigades of former anti-Qadhafi fighters from the western town of Zintan, and others from the town of Misrata and their allies have been fighting for nearly three weeks over the control of Tripoli’s international airport.

The battle is part of a wider struggle involving Islamists, tribal leaders, federalists, nationalists and armed groups vying for the spoils of post-Qadhafi Libya and to shape the future of the OPEC producing country.

On Saturday, sporadic shelling resumed in the capital after two days of relative calm. Plumes of black smoke rose over the south of Tripoli from a burning fuel tank at the airport’s fuel depot.

“A rocket fell and hit a new tank full of gasoline at the start of Saturday afternoon,” National Oil Corporation spokesman Mohamed Al Harari said. “Firefighters have pulled out again because of the fighting.”

Firefighters battled for days, sometimes under fire, to control a huge blaze ignited a week ago when the same fuel depot was hit by a rocket.

Britain said late Friday it would close its embassy from August 4, evacuating staff to Tunisia.

Britain was one of the last Western countries with an embassy open in Tripoli after the United States, the United Nations and most European states pulled their diplomatic staff.

“Reluctantly we’ve decided we have to leave and temporarily suspend embassy operations in Libya,” British Ambassador Michael Aron said on Twitter. “The risk of getting caught in the crossfire is too great.”

Benghazi was calmer on Saturday, four days after an alliance of Islamist militants from the Ansar Al Sharia group and ex-rebels drove the armed forces out of a special forces base and overran a major police station.

Ansar Al Sharia is designated a terrorist group by Washington which blames it for an attack on the US mission there that killed the US ambassador in 2012.

The Islamist alliance, called the Benghazi Revolutionaries Shura Council, has kept off the streets over the last three days although it remains the main military force inside the city.

GAZA CITY — At least 107 Palestinians were killed and an Israeli soldier was missing, presumed captured, as a fresh wave of violence swept through the Gaza Strip Saturday following the failure of an agreed ceasefire.

The attacks continued throughout the night, leaving at least 35 Palestinians dead in the Gaza town of Rafah alone in a series of Israeli air raids in the hours since midnight (2100 GMT) Friday.

US President Barack Obama called for the missing soldier, 23-year-old Second Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, to be “unconditionally” released, but also said more must be done to protect Gaza civilians.

Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, a member of the eight-strong Security Cabinet, accused Hamas of being behind the disappearance of the missing soldier and said the group would pay a high price.

However early Saturday, the Ezzeddine Al Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ armed wing, said it had no information on the whereabouts of the missing soldier.

“The Ezzeddine Al Qassam Brigades has no information on this soldier. We have lost contact with one of our combatant groups, which was fighting in the sector where the soldier went missing and it is possible that our fighters and this soldier were killed,” the group said in a statement.

The intensive fighting on Friday and early Saturday ensued after a planned three-day ceasefire, which collapsed after just hours.

The toll on the Palestinian side was 107 people dead and 350 others wounded, said Palestinian emergency services spokesman Ashraf Al Qodra.

Fifteen of those victims, including five children aged 3-12, came from the same family whose house was destroyed, he added.

Some 1,650 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians, have been killed in the 26 days since the present conflict started, Qodra said. On the Israeli side, 63 soldiers and three civilians have died.

Shelling killed dozens of people in southern Gaza hours into the truce, which began at 8am (0500 GMT) Friday and had been due to last 72 hours.

Hamas accused Israel of breaking the short-lived ceasefire, while Israel said it was responding to rocket fire.

The chances of a durable truce seemed as remote as ever after the presumed capture of the Israeli soldier.

The military also announced that two soldiers had been killed in the same incident near the southern city of Rafah.

“Our initial indications suggest a soldier has been abducted by terrorists in an incident where terrorists breached the ceasefire,” according to army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner.

He said a suicide bomber blew himself up, adding that first reports “indicate that a soldier was seized”.

In 2006, fighters from Gaza captured Israeli conscript Gilad Shalit and held him for five years before freeing him in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.

Brief respite 

Friday’s short truce gave people in the battered strip a brief respite from the fighting.

Within hours, air raid sirens were heard on the Israeli side, and heavy shelling resumed in Rafah.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said 51 rockets and mortar rounds hit Israel Friday, with another nine rockets shot down by the Iron Dome missile defence system.

Obama said the United States “unequivocally condemned “barbaric” Hamas and the Palestinian factions that were responsible for killing two Israeli soldiers, and abducting a third almost minutes after a ceasefire had been announced”.

“If they are serious about trying to resolve this situation, that soldier needs to be unconditionally released, as soon as possible.”

Obama added: “We have also been clear that innocent civilians in Gaza caught in the crossfire have to weigh on our conscience and we have to do more to protect them.”

Earlier on Friday, the Israeli military warned people in Gaza to remain at home, saying in voice messages to mobile phones that it was “pursuing terrorist elements in Rafah”.

US Secretary of State John Kerry had said that once the ceasefire was under way, Israeli and Palestinian representatives, including from Hamas, would begin talks in Cairo on a more durable truce.

The Palestinian group Islamic Jihad later said Egypt was postponing the talks after news of the Israeli soldier’s capture, but Cairo said the invitation to talk was “still in place”.

And Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said a joint delegation, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, would travel to Cairo Saturday for talks despite the renewed fighting.

‘Inexcusable’ world silence 

Before the truce, Israeli tank fire and aerial bombardment killed 14 Palestinians in Gaza, and the army said five soldiers died in mortar fire near the shared border.

Only minutes before the truce began, Palestinians continued to fire rockets into southern Israel, with five brought down by missile defences, army radio said.

In a speech published after the ceasefire broke down, Saudi King Abdullah denounced “inexcusable” world silence over Israel’s “war crimes” in Gaza.

“We see the blood of our brothers in Palestine being shed in collective massacres, that have spared nobody, and in war crimes against humanity... all taking place under the eyes and ears of the international community... that has stood indifferently watching events in the whole region,” he said, demanding a series of humanitarian breaks to ease conditions for Gaza’s civilians.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office accused Hamas and other Gaza fighters of “flagrantly violating” the ceasefire.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum responded that “it is the [Israeli] occupation which violated the ceasefire. The Palestinian resistance acted based on... the right to self defence.”