(Reuters) - Israel
launched more air strikes on Gaza on Sunday after taking its military
campaign to a new level by flattening a 13-storey apartment tower
following a warning to residents to evacuate. Palestinian militants
kept up their cross-border rocket fire in what has become a conflict of
attrition that has defied attempts by regional power Egypt to broker a durable truce in fighting now in its seventh week. An
Israeli air strike killed two people on a motorcycle in Gaza, medical
officials said, hours after a bombing attack brought Al Zafer Tower in
Gaza City crashing to the ground. It was the first time Israel
had destroyed so large a structure in the Gaza war. It launched the
attack a day after a mortar bomb killed a four-year-old Israeli boy, and
Israel's president attended his funeral on Sunday near the Gaza border. The
Israeli military said the building contained a command center belonging
to Hamas militants, and that it had fired a non-explosive warning
rocket on Saturday, 10 minutes before attacking. Local residents said the high-rise housed 44 families. Medical officials said 17 people were wounded in the Israeli strike. Egypt
called on Israel and the Palestinians on Saturday to halt hostilities
and return to talks. But there was no sign that negotiations, last held
before a ceasefire collapsed on Tuesday, would resume any time soon. Israel also faced rocket fire from the north on Saturday. Two
missiles launched from Lebanon struck Israel's Galilee. Lebanese and
Israeli sources said it was not initially clear who was behind the
attack, which caused no casualties or damage. At least five rockets fired from Syria
landed at various locations on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, the
Israeli army said. All fell in open areas. It was also not immediately
known who launched them. COMMERCIAL CENTER Late
on Saturday, an Israeli air strike destroyed a commercial center in the
southern Gaza town of Rafah and three people were hurt, local medical
staff said. Palestinian
health officials say 2,085 people, most of them civilians and more than
400 of them children, have been killed in the Gaza Strip since July 8,
when Israel launched an offensive with the declared aim of ending
Palestinian rocket fire into its territory. Sixty-four Israeli soldiers and four civilians in Israel have been killed. Hamas
has said it will not stop fighting until the Israeli-Egyptian blockade
on Gaza is lifted. Both Israel and Egypt view Hamas as a security threat
and are reluctant to make sweeping concessions without guarantees
weapons will not enter the economically crippled enclave. The
Cairo talks had aimed to secure a lasting deal to open the way for
reconstruction aid to flow into the Gaza territory of 1.8 million
people, where thousands of homes have been destroyed. The United Nations
says about 400,000 Gazans have been displaced in the longest and
deadliest violence between Israel and the Palestinians since the second
Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, a decade ago.
Israel destroys 13-storey building in Gaza air strike
Reuters
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