Gaza bloodbath: Five children die; toll 572 22 July 2014 GAZA CITY: The death toll in Gaza rose to 572 on Monday. And the Israeli army said another seven soldiers had been killed in fighting in Gaza, raising the overall Israeli death toll to 27, all but two of them soldiers. Gaza emergency services spokesman Ashraf Al-Qudra said airstrikes and shelling killed 54 people, including five children, across the enclave on Monday, and another 68 bodies were pulled from the rubble in areas hit by heavy fighting a day earlier. The army also said its troops had killed “more than 10 militants” who had infiltrated Israel through two tunnels. Fighters killed inside Israel are not included in Qudra’s Gaza toll. The White House said Israel must do more to protect civilians caught up in the crossfire of its assault. “We would like the Israelis to take even greater steps to ensure the protection of civilians,” spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters. UN chief Ban Ki-moon demanded an immediate end to the raging conflict, during a visit to Cairo to push for a cease-fire. The “violence must stop, it must stop now,” he said. Several hundred pro-Palestinian protesters demanded a halt to Israel’s atrocities in Gaza during a peaceful protest near the Israeli Embassy in the Cypriot capital. Meanwhile, residents of the Gaza Strip lit fireworks and chanted “God is great!” into the early morning darkness on Monday after Hamas said it had captured an Israeli soldier. Abu Ubaida, the masked and camouflaged spokesman of Hamas’ armed wing, announced that a soldier named as Shaul Alon was seized in heavy fighting on the Gaza border on Sunday. Nasrallah: Hezbollah will stand by resistance in Gaza Jul. 22, 2014 
BEIRUT: Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah vowed that his party would stand by the resistance in Gaza during a telephone conversation with Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders. Nasrallah voiced his party’s readiness to cooperate with both Palestinian resistance parties which have been confronting Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip for the past 14 days. The Israeli offensive has killed nearly 500 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians. “Hezbollah and the Lebanese resistance will stand by the Palestinian people’s uprising and resistance in our heart, willpower, hope and destiny,” Nasrallah said in a late-night telephone call to Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal, a Hezbollah statement said Monday. Nasrallah also expressed Hezbollah’s support for Hamas’ “rightful demands to end the current battle.” The statement said Meshaal assured Nasrallah that the Palestinian resistance “will remain steadfast and make a second victory in July, God willing,” in reference to Hezbollah’s proclaimed victory against Israel in Summer 2006 War. Nasrallah warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the Palestinian resistance was stronger than he thinks. “If Netanyahu is counting on governmental and international support in his [Gaza] offensive, the resistance in Gaza relies by all means on the strongest popular support,” Nasrallah said. The statement said the Hezbollah chief also discussed developments on the battleground in Gaza in a telephone call with Ramadan Abdullah Shalah, the leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Nasrallah stressed both “Hezbollah’s and the Islamic resistance in Lebanon’s support for the resistance in Gaza,” the statement added. Nasrallah is scheduled to make a public address this Friday on Jerusalem Day. “In light of Jerusalem Day, which was announced by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to mark the last week of Ramadan, and our insistence on the resistance path and struggle to liberate Palestine from the sea to the river, Hezbollah will hold a ceremony” in which Nasrallah will speak, the party’s office said. The event will take place in Sayyed al-Shuhada Complex in Beirut’s southern suburbs at 5 p.m. |
