Region

VIENNA — Iran’s chief negotiator in nuclear talks in Vienna warned Saturday that Tehran is ready to walk away if “excessive” Western demands cause a failure, eight days before a deadline for a deal.

Abbas Araqchi said however that he hoped that the attendance from Sunday of foreign ministers including US Secretary of State John Kerry would help overcome “deep differences” that remain.

“If we see that the excessive demands [of Western powers] persisting and that a deal is impossible, this is not a drama, we will continue with our nuclear programme,” Araqchi said.

“The presence of ministers will have a positive influence,” he told Iran state television from the Austrian capital. “There are questions that ministers need to take decisions on.”

Iran’s talks with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany are aimed at a grand bargain reducing in scope Iran’s nuclear activities in return for sanctions relief.

Such a deal is meant to quash for good concerns about the Islamic republic getting the bomb after more than a decade of failed diplomacy, threats of war and atomic expansion by Iran.

Iran denies wanting nuclear weapons. The deadline for an accord is July 20, when an interim accord struck by foreign ministers expires, although this can be put back if both sides agree.

On Friday, William Burns, Washington’s pointman in secret 2013 talks with Iran that helped produce the November deal, said that the differences between the two sides remain “quite significant”.

“I would say that there is a lot of ground that has to be covered if we’re going to get to a comprehensive agreement,” Burns told Indian channel NDTV according to a State Department transcript.

“We need to continue to work at it and we’re determined to do that,” he said.

Kerry was expected late Saturday or early Sunday in Vienna where he will be joined by his British, French and German counterparts William Hague, Laurent Fabius and Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Hague said on Saturday that the Western ministers would also discuss how to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza. Kerry and Steinmeier were also to talk about a US-German spat over spying.

Skipping the meeting however is Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and it remains unclear who will represent China.

Critical choices

Kerry “will gauge the extent of Iran’s willingness to commit to credible and verifiable steps that would back up its public statements about the peaceful nature of its nuclear programme,” the State Department said.

He will “assess Iran’s willingness to make a set of critical choices at the negotiating table” and then “make recommendations” to US President Barack Obama on the next steps.

The main sticking point is uranium enrichment, a process which can produce nuclear fuel — Iran’s stated aim — but also in highly purified form the core of an atomic weapon.

On Tuesday, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, gave a speech indicating that Tehran intends to greatly increase its enrichment capacities.

The six powers want a sharp reduction, however, with a senior US official saying last week that Iran’s activities in this area should be a “fraction” of what they are now.

This, coupled with other measures, would extend the so-called “breakout time” — the time Iran would need to make enough highly-enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon, should it choose to do so.

Iran says it wants to enrich uranium to fuel planned nuclear power plants around Iran, but these facilities are years, if not decades, away from being in operation, the West says.

GAZA CITY — The world implored Israel and Hamas Saturday to end hostilities as warplanes pounded Gaza for a fifth straight day, killing at least 30 Palestinians, and fighters replied with rockets.

Both sides have brushed off calls for a truce, and Israel is building up troops and armour on the Gaza border in preparation for a possible ground invasion.

As the Palestinian death toll hit 135, and with no Israelis killed, the UN Security Council urged Israel and Hamas to respect “international humanitarian laws” and stop the loss of life.

In a unanimous declaration, the 15-member council urged a return to the “calm and restitution of the November 2012 ceasefire”, referring to Gaza’s last deadly full-scale conflict.

Israel’s aerial campaign — the largest and deadliest since 2012 — saw strikes start early on Saturday, including one that hit a centre for the handicapped, and another that killed two nephews of Gaza’s former Hamas premier, Ismail Haniyeh.

Two Gaza rockets fired from Gaza and apparently targeting Jerusalem hit the southern West Bank city of Hebron, and another struck near Bethlehem, the army said, as Hamas threatened to rain down more rockets on major Israeli population centres.

Hundreds of rockets have so far caused no Israeli deaths, and many have been intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defence system.

Centre for disabled hit 

An attack on the northern Gaza Strip hit a centre for the handicapped, killing two disabled women and wounding four, the centre’s director said.

“They didn’t understand what was happening and they were so frightened,” Jamila Alaywa said of those inside the care home.

“They fired the rocket and it hit us without any warning.”

The army had no immediate comment.

Other targets included a bank, the homes of Hamas leaders and a mosque that Israel said was being used to store weapons.

Two nephews of Haniyeh were among the dead in one strike, residents said.

Three rockets fired from Gaza, apparently at Jerusalem, fell short, hitting Hebron and Bethlehem, the army and Palestinian security sources said.

There were no reports of casualties from the attacks.

Hamas has fired several rockets at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv since Tuesday, most of which have been intercepted.

Well over 500 projectiles have struck Israel, the army says.

International efforts were under way to mediate a truce, with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah Al Sisi’s spokesman saying he was in touch with both sides.

Sisi met Middle East Quartet envoy Tony Blair in Cairo on Saturday to discuss the crisis, and released a statement warning against escalation causing further loss of “innocent lives”.

Fruitless mediation efforts 

In Washington, the White House has said it is willing to “leverage” its relationships in the region to bring about a ceasefire.

The chief diplomats of Britain, France, Germany and the United States are due to discuss how to achieve a truce when they meet in Vienna on Sunday, on the sidelines of talks on Iran’s nuclear programme.

Tehran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, in a taped interview with US broadcaster NBC, urged Washington to use the United Nations to stop the Israeli strikes.

But there has been little sign that either side is interested in an immediate end to the hostilities.

On Friday, Cairo said its efforts to mediate a return to a 2012 ceasefire agreement “have met with stubbornness”.

And speaking at a news conference in Tel Aviv, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said he would not end the military campaign until he achieved his goal of stopping the Hamas fire.

“No international pressure will prevent us from striking, with all force, against the terrorist organisation which calls for our destruction,” he said.

Haniyeh said Israel started it.

“[Israel] is the one that started this aggression and it must stop, because we are [simply] defending ourselves,” he said.

The latest conflict unfolded after last month’s kidnap and murder of three young Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank and the brutal revenge killing of a Palestinian teenager by Jewish extremists.

Israel cracked down on Hamas, though the Islamist group declined to confirm or deny involvement in the abductions, and Gaza fighters hit back with intensified rocket fire.

Israel says preparations are under way for a possible ground incursion, with tanks and artillery massed along the border and some 33,000 reservists mobilised out of 40,000 approved by the Cabinet.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has said he expected a political decision on a possible ground operation to be taken by Sunday.

GAZA CITY (AFP) –– Sixteen Palestinians were killed in Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip early Saturday, bringing the toll on the fifth day of violence to 121, medics said.

The latest strike killed three in the eastern Tufah neighbourhood of Gaza City, Gaza health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said.

The raid came shortly after two people were killed in a strike that hit a charitable association for the disabled in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, and another three people died in an attack in western Gaza City.

Earlier, Qudra announced the deaths of eight other Palestinians, including a man who died of wounds sustained in an earlier strike, five people killed in Gaza's northern Jebaliya, and two further south in Deir el Balah.

Local officials said the morning's raids hit targets that included mosques and homes of Hamas officials, throughout the coastal enclave.

The latest fatalities raise the death toll to 121 since Israel began Operation Protective Edge early Tuesday in an attempt to halt cross-border rocket fire by militant groups.

Since then, militants have fired approximately 520 mortar rounds and rockets that struck Israel, while another 140 rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defence system, an Israeli army statement said late Friday.

It is the deadliest violence since November 2012, with a growing number of rockets fired at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and even as far north as Haifa.

So far, no Israelis have been killed.

An Israeli soldier was severely wounded in a mortar attack late Thursday, and another man was very seriously injured when a rocket hit a petrol station in the southern port city of Ashdod early Friday.

Two soldiers were lightly wounded along the border with Gaza when Palestinians fired an anti-tank missile.

And an elderly woman was slightly injured when a rocket hit her home in the southern city of Beersheva.

Israel has authorised the call-up of 40,000 reservist troops, and threatened a ground operation to stamp out the rocket fire.

UNITED NATIONS — United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday appointed veteran UN official Staffan de Mistura, a former UN special envoy to Afghanistan and Iraq, to replace Lakhdar Brahimi as the international mediator seeking an end to Syria’s civil war.

The move comes amid worsening violence as Islamist militants seized swathes of Syria and Iraq and after Syrian President Bashar Assad was re-elected in a June 3 poll described by Ban as a blow to international efforts to end to the conflict.

“In taking this decision I have consulted broadly, including with Syrian authorities,” Ban told reporters, adding that he had appointed Arab League diplomat Ramzy Ezzeldin Ramzy, of Egypt, as de Mistura’s deputy.

“The special envoy will provide good offices aimed at bringing an end to all violence and human rights violations and promoting a peaceful solution to the Syrian crisis,” he said.

Diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, had confirmed the appointment on Wednesday.

Syrian UN Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari said: “The Syrian government is examining the secretary general’s decision.”

Brahimi, an Algerian diplomat, stepped down on May 31, frustrated by global deadlock over how to end the three-year civil war in Syria. He had long threatened to quit, just as his predecessor — former UN secretary general Kofi Annan — did in 2012.

Annan resigned after six months as the UN and Arab League joint special representative on Syria, accusing the UN Security Council of failing to unite behind efforts to end the fighting that has now killed more than 150,000 people.

Russia, supported by China, has vetoed four Security Council resolutions threatening action against its ally Syria.

“I call on the international community, including in particular the Security Council and the Syrian parties, to give Mr de Mistura unified support in order to allow him to succeed in his mission,” Ban said.

De Mistura will not be a joint UN and Arab League envoy like Annan and Brahimi. De Mistura and Ramzy will be solely representatives of the United Nations.

De Mistura, a dual citizen of Italy and Sweden, has worked with the United Nations in Somalia, the Middle East, the Balkans, Nepal, Iraq and Afghanistan during the past 30 years. He was most recently the UN envoy in Afghanistan in 2010-11.

The United Nations says 10.8 million people in Syria need help, of which 4.7 million are in hard-to-reach areas, while three million others have fled the conflict.

The United States, Britain and opposition Syrian Coalition welcomed de Mistura’s appointment.

US Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, said Washington was ready to work with de Mistura, who had a proven record as “a tenacious and creative problem solver, and a tireless champion of peace, security and human dignity”.

“Political transition by mutual agreement of the Syrian parties, supported by the international community, remains the only way to bring about sustainable peace in Syria. The new UN Special Representative has our strong support in these efforts,” British Foreign Secretary William Hague said in a statement.

VIENNA — Big-power foreign ministers are joining Iran nuclear talks on a diplomatic rescue mission. But even their muscle is seen as unlikely to bridge differences on Tehran’s atomic activities in time to meet the July 20 target date for a deal.

“Obviously both sides have set out positions that are irreconcilable,” says Gary Samore, who left the US team negotiating with Iran last year. “That’s why this negotiation is not going to end in agreement.”

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius alluded to the impasse this week, saying “none of the big points” had been settled. He said “the near totality” of a draft agreement that is being laboriously worked on consists of blanks. And in comments published Thursday by Austria’s Wiener Zeitung, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said that agreement was far from certain.

Two diplomats who are familiar with the confidential talks said Thursday that US Secretary of State John Kerry and the top diplomats from Britain, France and Germany were tentatively scheduled to arrive in Vienna starting Saturday. They said Russia’s foreign minister and a high foreign ministry official from China could also fly in.

Deep divisions persist over uranium enrichment, which can produce both reactor fuel or fissile warhead cores. The US wants deep cuts in the program. Instead, Tehran has gone public with demands that it be allowed to hugely expand it.

Iran insists it does not want nuclear arms. The big powers fear that its array of more than 9,000 centrifuges enriching uranium and about 10,000 on standby already gives it the ability to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one weapon in three or four months. They argue that — with Russia providing fuel for its power reactor and ready to do so for future ones — it has no need for so many machines.

GAZA — The latest mini-war between Israel and the Islamist group Hamas began with the Gaza-based fighters eager to strike a blow, but the escalation that followed has left them physically and diplomatically exposed, with no ready way out.

Hamas has sent its rockets streaking into Israel after a month of army raids in the occupied West Bank — in search of three missing settler teenagers — that landed more than 900 Palestinians in jail, many of them Hamas members.

The self-styled Islamic Resistance Movement was further prompted to action by widespread anger at the burning alive of a Palestinian youth by suspected Jewish extremists last week, an apparent revenge attack after the missing teens were found shot dead in the West Bank — murders Israel blames on Hamas.

Hamas said it hadn’t sought a war, but now hundreds of Israeli bombs continue to pound the coastal strip, killing scores of Gazans — almost all of them civilians, according to Palestinian medical officials.

It says the onus for ending the hostilities is on Israel, where the rocket attacks have caused no fatalities and whose missile defence system has intercepted many of the Hamas projectiles.

“Yes, we want calm. We don’t like escalation, and we didn’t make an escalation. [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu imposed this aggression upon us,” Hamas leader Khaled Mishaal said in a speech broadcast on Wednesday.

“To end his aggression, first end his policy of occupation, settlement, Judaisation, detentions, killings and demolitions. End that first. Our people deserve to live free,” he added.

Hamas orphaned

Previous lopsided battles between Palestinian fighters and Israel’s powerful military — most recently an eight-day conflict in 2012 and a month-long tussle that began in late 2008, and included a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip — have left Hamas’s position mostly intact.

The group would claim victory, buoyed by some international sympathy, speedily replenish their cache of rockets through Gaza’s porous border with Egypt and maintain its broad presence in the West Bank.

But much has changed since.

In Egypt, the military has ousted the ruling Muslim Brotherhood, a key ally to the Gaza government, which helped mediate a truce in 2012.

And it will be harder to restock when hostilities end now that Egypt’s new government has stepped up efforts to demolish the cross-border tunnels that fed not only the blockaded coastal strip’s weapons caches but its entire economy.

Gaza was once the favoured cause of regional powers, but with Egypt now openly hostile, and stalwart backers Turkey and Qatar distracted by the lightning rise of Islamist extremists in Iraq, Hamas has found itself orphaned.

“Turkey and Qatar may play a role in trying to restore calm, but they have no direct influence on the occupation, which makes their position weak,” said Hamza Abu Shanab, a Gaza political analyst.

In the West Bank, too, where it is always under the jealous eye of secular Palestinian rivals, Hamas’ fortunes have hit a new low with Israel’s arrests.

“Israel is holding all Palestinians responsible for the killing of the three Israelis, and that’s what it’s doing with the campaign of arrests everywhere in the West Bank, and it’s extended this policy of collective punishment now to Gaza,” Hamas MP Fathi Qarawi told Reuters.

“Hamas was forced to make a response, and events have developed. We want a truce... Egypt can still play a role and a good role in pressuring Israel to stop its attacks,” he said.

Bleak bargain

Securing a truce, however, is not simple when a determined military showing is considered a matter of pride and honour.

Mishaal expressed glee at the group’s ability to lob its long-range rockets at Israel’s commercial capital Tel Aviv and for unprecedented distances deep into its north.

Despite the death and pain wrought on Gaza’s citizens, Hamas says it has the means to carry on a long campaign if it must.

“Whoever thinks Hamas’ ammunition will run out in days, weeks or months is delusional. We have lots in our pocket,” senior Hamas official Mushir Al Masri said on Wednesday.

“We want to bring you to your knees and achieve victory,” Masri told Aqsa TV.

The tough rhetoric, however, is in part a cloak for weakness at home, where deepening poverty and hardship in Gaza helped push the group into a troubled unity government with the Fatah Party headed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

“Hamas is extremely weak now. Weaker than ever before. It capitulated entirely to Abbas’ demands in forming a reconciliation government. Gaza is in economic crisis. Hamas is bankrupt and doesn’t have a friend left in the world,” said Gershon Baskin, an Israeli peace activist and analyst.

Baskin ran back-channel negotiations that led to the release in 2010 of an Israeli soldier abducted by Hamas in exchange for over a thousand Palestinian prisoners. He says fractures within the group may hinder a quick ceasefire.

“There are power struggles within [Hamas]... and it lacks an authoritative command. It’s a mess inside. But if there’s one thing all parts of its organisation agree on, it’s that an Israeli attack on Gaza builds up sympathy for it there, the West Bank and the Arab world,” he told Reuters.

If so — and Israel has hinted it could launch a ground offensive into the Strip to decisively pare back Hamas’ capability — it is a bleak bargain.

An infantry and tank drive may give Hamas more opportunities to impose casualties and even abduct Israeli soldiers and trade them for Palestinian prisoners, said Firas Abi Ali, an analyst at IHS Country Risk in London.

“Our backs are to the wall and we have nothing to lose,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said on Thursday.

“We are ready to undergo the battle up to the end, and we are determined to confront the occupation,” he added.

BEIRUT — The death toll in Syria’s three-year war has eclipsed 170,000 people, one-third of them civilians, a monitoring group said in a new toll released on Thursday.

“Ever since the first casualty of the Syrian revolution was registered on March 18, 2011 in Daraa province, the deaths of 171,509 people have been documented,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Among the dead were 56,495 civilians, including 9,092 children, according to the toll, which included casualties documented up to July 8 this year.

Another 65,803 were regime troops and pro-regime militiamen, while 46,301 were rebels seeking President Bashar Assad’s ouster and members of the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group.

The rebel toll includes 15,422 non-Syrians who travelled to the war-torn country to join the ranks of jihadists or local Islamist opposition groups.

Among the ranks of loyalists killed were 39,036 regular troops, as well as 24,655 members of pro-regime militias, 509 fighters from Lebanon’s Shiite Hizbollah, and 1,603 other non-Syrians fighting on Assad’s side in the war.

Meanwhile, the deaths of 2,910 unidentified victims were also documented, according to the observatory.

The Britain-based group, which relies on a broad network of activists, doctors and lawyers inside Syria to document casualties, said the actual number of killed among fighters on both sides was likely to be much higher.

It said documenting all the deaths was difficult “because both sides in the war try to conceal their actual losses”.

Another 20,000 people detained by the regime were completely unaccounted for, said the observatory, as were some 7,000 regime troops held by rebel fighters.

More than 2,000 other people are currently in the captivity of Islamic rebels and IS, accused of “collaborating” with the Assad regime.

Another 1,500 Islamic State, rebel and Kurdish fighters have been kidnapped in recent months during battles among each other.

The Syrian conflict has forced nearly half the country’s population to flee their homes.

BAGHDAD/ERBIL — Kurdish ministers boycotted Iraq’s caretaker Cabinet and authorities in Baghdad halted cargo flights to two Kurdish cities on Thursday in an escalating feud between the Kurds and the Shiite-led central government.

The dispute, linked to an Islamist insurgency raging in Sunni Muslim provinces of Iraq, is likely to complicate efforts to reach agreement on a new government in Baghdad to help tackle the violence.

The four Kurdish ministers withdrew from Cabinet meetings in protest at Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki’s “provocative” branding of their provincial capital Erbil as a haven for the Sunni militants who have seized much of north and west Iraq.

The gains by the Islamic State and other fighters pose the gravest security challenge to Maliki’s Shiite-led government since the withdrawal of US troops in 2011 and raise the spectre of Iraq fragmenting along sectarian and ethnic lines.

Kurds exploited the turmoil to take control of the city of Kirkuk and its huge oil reserves, achieving a long-held dream, and their leader Massoud Barzani told his parliament last week to prepare a referendum on independence, infuriating Baghdad.

A senior Kurdish official said the four Kurdish ministers would continue running their ministries and “did not pull out from the government”. They did not mention a timeline for their boycott or terms for their return, but they called for an inclusive national government.

In their absence, the Cabinet’s first agenda item on Thursday was to instruct the foreign ministry — headed by Kurdish minister Hoshiyar Zebari — to summon home diplomats reported to have demonstrated in London for Kurdish secession.

As the Cabinet met, the head of Iraq’s civil aviation authority, Nasser Bandar, said cargo flights to the Kurdish cities of Erbil and Suleimaniyah had been suspended.

He suggested the decision, which does not affect passenger flights, was linked to Maliki’s accusation that Erbil had become a base for Islamist militants.

“There are sometimes certain procedures that should be taken to prevent things reaching the hands of the terrorists, so we have decided to stop cargoes going to Suleimaniyah or Erbil until further notice,” Bandar told Reuters.

With the Islamist-led insurgency consuming Iraq’s Sunni provinces, the United States and other countries have called for politicians in Baghdad to set up a more inclusive government following a parliamentary election in April.

Sunnis and Kurds are demanding that Maliki leave office, saying he has marginalised them during his eight years in power, but he shows no sign of agreeing to step aside.

Relations between Baghdad and the Kurds hit a low on Wednesday when Maliki accused them of allowing Erbil to be used as a centre for Islamic State and others, including former members of Saddam Hussein’s now-banned Baath Party.

Responding to what he called Maliki’s “void” accusations, Barzani’s spokesman said on Thursday Maliki “has been afflicted by a true hysteria and lost his balance as he tries as hard as he can to justify his errors and failure and make others responsible for it”.

The spokesman, Omaid Sabah, said Erbil “is a refuge now for all those fleeing his dictatorship” and called for Maliki to apologise to the Iraqi people for destroying the country. “The person who destroyed it cannot save it from crises,” he added.

Many Sunni Muslims who fled the mostly Sunni northern city of Mosul during the militants’ offensive have ended up in Iraqi Kurdistan, with leading Sunni political figures hated by Maliki now frequenting Erbil.

The militants have seized cash, weapons and other equipment during their sweep through the Sunni provinces. Among their haul, Iraq told the United Nations this week, is nearly 40kg of uranium compound seized in Mosul.

The UN atomic agency played down the significance of the material on Thursday, saying it was “low grade” and did not pose a significant security risk.

The government also said it had lost control of a former chemical weapons facility last month at Muthanna, north of Baghdad, where remnants of a former chemical weapons programme were kept. A US Defence Department spokesman said the material appeared to be old and unlikely to be accessible or usable.

GAZA CITY — Israeli warplanes kept up their deadly raids on Gaza Thursday but failed to prevent Hamas from firing rockets at Jerusalem, two of which struck near settlements in the West Bank.

As the violence escalated, with more than 30 Palestinians killed on Thursday alone, UN chief Ban Ki-moon appealed for an immediate ceasefire at an emergency meeting of the Security Council.

“It is now more urgent than ever to try to find common ground for a return to calm and a ceasefire understanding,” he said as the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation lobbied the UN for a crackdown on Israel.

Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a similar plea in a phone call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Putin urged an immediate end to confrontation and expressed concern over civilian casualties.

And US Secretary of State John Kerry warned the region was facing “dangerous moment” after speaking to both Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

But Israel appeared bent on dealing a fatal blow to Hamas, with Netanyahu reportedly saying talk of a ceasefire was “not even on the agenda”.

Hamas also appeared to have no interest in letting up, striking deep inside Israel over the past 48 hours, with rockets crashing down near Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and even as far away as Hadera, 116 kilometres to the north.

As sirens wailed across Jerusalem for the second time in two days, a series of loud explosions echoed across the city as the Iron Dome anti-missile system shot down two rockets fired from Gaza, the army said.

Another two crashed down in open areas in the occupied West Bank, one hitting near the Maaleh Adumim settlement and the other landing near Ofer, an Israeli military prison just west of Ramallah, causing no damage or injuries, witnesses and security officials told AFP.

Hamas fighters from Izzeddine Al Qassam took responsibility, saying they had fired “four M75 rockets at Jerusalem”.

Empty streets 

Since the start of the campaign in the early hours of Tuesday, 82 Palestinians have been killed and more than 500 injured.

As the number of victims in Gaza rose, Egypt opened the Rafah border crossing, with hospitals in north Sinai placed on standby to receive the wounded, Egypt’s official MENA news agency reported.

But there have been no Israeli deaths or serious injuries, although medics said one woman died on Thursday, a day after falling while running for cover.

“We are facing long days of fighting and Hamas is trying to surprise Israel with attacks from the air, sea and land,” Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said on Thursday.

The violence has emptied the streets from Gaza City to Tel Aviv, as both Israelis and Palestinians take shelter indoors for fear of being caught in the open when the next rocket or missile hits.

On the beachfront in Tel Aviv, cafes which would normally have been bursting at the seams at the height of tourist season sat empty, their waiters nervously checking the phones for any news of incoming missiles.

But in Gaza, the story was much darker after an Israeli missile slammed into a coffee shop in Khan Younis, killing nine football fans as they watched a World Cup semifinal match. Another 15 people were hurt.

And Israel has confirmed preparations are under way for a possible ground attack, with tanks seen massing along the border and Netanyahu facing mounting pressure from coalition hardliners to put boots back on the ground in the territory from which Israel pulled all troops and settlers in 2005.

“If we can achieve our goals without a ground operation, we would prefer it this way,” said Yossi Kuperwasser, head of strategic affairs ministry.

860 sites bombed 

Since the start of the operation, the Israeli military’s biggest offensive on Gaza since November 2012, its forces have hit over 860 “terror sites,” 110 of them on Thursday.

In the same period, Gaza fighters had fired 470 rockets, of which more than 350 had struck Israel, while another 87 rockets were intercepted, an army statement said. Of that number, 103 struck Israel on Thursday, while another 21 were intercepted.

Neither side has shown any sign of backing down, and Israel has approved the call-up of 40,000 reservists as it steps up its preparations for a possible ground assault.

Analysts said Hamas had a clear aim: to drag Israel into a ground war hoping to inflict heavy casualties on its troops who would likely come under fire from anti-tank missiles and explosive devices. Fighters would also be seeking to capture Israeli soldiers to use as leverage.

MANAMA — Bahrain has charged the country’s most senior opposition leader and one of his aides with holding an illegal meeting with a US diplomat, the public prosecutor’s office said on Thursday.

It said Al Wefaq Party leader Sheikh Ali Salman and his political assistant, Khalil Al Marzouq, should have obtained permission before meeting Tom Malinowski, US Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labour.

Bahrain expelled Malinowski earlier this week, saying he had “intervened flagrantly” in the country’s internal affairs by holding the meeting. The United States has said it is “deeply concerned” about his treatment and is considering a response.

The incident has opened a rift between Washington and one of its main regional allies. Bahrain hosts the headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet but has bristled at American criticism over its human rights record since suppressing a popular uprising in 2011.

The public prosecutor said Salman and Marzouq were questioned and then charged with “contacting a representative of a foreign government in violation of the political associations law and related ministerial decisions”.

They were freed after guaranteeing their places of residence, it added, without giving any further details.

Al Wefaq confirmed the charges and called them unfair, saying such regulations had never been implemented before and no one had been prosecuted for them.

Malinowski attended a Ramadan evening meeting of Al Wefaq on Sunday and met Salman and an aide again at the US embassy on Monday. He said he was asked whether they had made specific requests of the Americans, and replied that they had not.

Salman and Marzouq were interrogated at the Criminal Investigations Department on Wednesday before they were summoned to appear at the public prosecutor’s office on Thursday. Salman told Reuters he was questioned for about half an hour, without his lawyer, “about the content of the [embassy] meeting and what was discussed at it”.

A court in Bahrain last month cleared Marzouq of terrorism charges.