Gaza toll climbs as rockets hit Israel

JERUSALEM - The Palestinian death toll in an Israeli offensive against Islamist militants in the Gaza Strip passed 570 on Monday as Israeli shells struck a hospital, residential homes were bombed, and the army said it had killed at least 10 gunmen who had tunneled into Israel.

The Israeli army said it was checking a claim by the armed wing of Hamas that it had seized a soldier in fighting on Sunday. A military official suggested that Hamas might be holding the remains of a serviceman who had been killed in action.

On the 14th day of the Israeli military campaign, with large Israeli infantry and tank forces inside the Gaza Strip, militants fired fresh volleys of rockets at southern and central Israel, again reaching Tel Aviv.

Several rockets were intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system, and there were no casualties.

The army said it foiled a Hamas attempt to infiltrate Israel through a tunnel Monday morning. A military spokesman said two squads of Hamas militants disguised as Israeli soldiers emerged from two tunnels near an Israeli kibbutz and exchanged fire with Israeli forces who arrived at the scene.

Four Israeli soldiers were killed when their vehicle was hit by an antitank missile. An air strike and gunfire from the ground killed at least 10 militants, Israeli officials said.

Two more soldiers were killed Monday by an antitank rocket that struck a house they had commandeered in Gaza, and another was killed by friendly fire in the Shuja'iya neighborhood of Gaza City, according to military accounts reported by Israeli news outlets.

A total of 25 soldiers have been killed and more than 100 wounded in the Gaza campaign, and two Israeli civilians have died in rocket strikes. The military death toll is the highest since a 2006 war against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.

Despite the casualties, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged Monday that "the operation will gradually expand until the goal is achieved: restoring quiet for the citizens of Israel for an extended period."

More than 570 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes, most of them civilians, according to Gaza health officials, and more than 3,000 have been injured. Tens of thousands of Gazans have fled the fighting, and the United Nations said more than 100,000 are taking refuge in its shelters, most of them schools. The Israeli army said it has killed 170 militants.

Israeli shells hit the Shuada al-Aqsa hospital in the town of Deir al-Balah on Monday, killing four people and wounding 70, the Gaza Health Ministry said. Hospital staff said shells hit the third floor, which houses operating rooms and an intensive care unit. Two patients were killed in their beds.

The army said an initial investigation of the incident "suggests that a cache of antitank missiles was stored in the immediate vicinity" of the hospital, and that "this cache was successfully targeted."

In a strike Monday night on a multistory residential building in Gaza City, 11 people, including five children, were killed, the Gaza Health Ministry said.

Another strike near the home of the Siyam family in the southern town of Rafah killed nine people, including four women and three children, the U.N. said.

An air strike on a house in Khan Yunis on Sunday night killed 25 people from the extended Abu Jamea family who had gathered for the traditional evening meal to break the daylong Ramadan fast, residents reported. Rescue crews worked through the night to pull the dead and wounded from the rubble.

An investigation of the incident by the Israeli human-rights group B'Tselem found that a Hamas operative had been visiting the house at the time, but no advance warning was given before the building was struck.

There was no immediate comment on the incidents from the Israeli army, which has targeted hundreds of family homes of suspected militants during the campaign, leading to extensive civilian casualties.

A strike Sunday in the Gaza City neighborhood of Shuji'iya hit the family home of Khalil al-Haya, a senior Hamas leader, killing his son, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. In a taped message from his hideout on Monday, Haya, his voice breaking, mourned the loss of his relatives.

"If there are tears in my eyes, they are the tears of men that speak glory and power," he said. "I say to our Arab and Islamic nation, 'What more are you waiting for?' I say to all those betting that Hamas' spine will be broken and that the sword of Qassam will be surrendered that they will be disappointed."

The Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, said Sunday that it had seized an Israeli soldier named Shaul Aron, displaying a photo ID card and a military identification number. The announcement set off street celebrations in Gaza and the West Bank.

The name in the announcement is similar to that of Oron Shaul, one of 13 soldiers the army said were killed in fighting Sunday in Shuja'iya and elsewhere in the Gaza Strip.

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