More bodies found in Gaza rubble, Hamas says

The death toll in Gaza rises to 509 on Monday following the bloodiest day in six years in the Palestinian enclave where Israel is pressing its military operation against Hamas rocket fire and attack tunnels.

According to figures released by Hamas emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra, some 15 people are killed in several strikes across Gaza on Monday and 45 bodies are pulled from the rubble in areas hit by heavy fighting a day earlier.

Separately, the Israeli army says it killed more than 10 attackers who infiltrated southern Israel through two cross-border tunnels.

Fighters killed inside Israel are not included in Qudra’s Gaza toll.

Among those killed on Monday are a family of nine who died in an Israeli strike on a house in the southern city of Rafah, he says. Seven of the victims are children.

Four more people are killed in various strikes to the south and east of Gaza City, while another dies in the northern town of Beit Hanun. There is also one other casualty in Rafah, he says.

Of the 45 bodies recovered on Monday, 11 are from Shejaiya, hiking the death toll from a blistering Sunday attack to 72 dead, he says.

Qudra has said 80 percent of the victims in Shejaiya were women, children and elderly people, with around 400 people wounded. Israel urged Shejaiya residents to evacuate the area prior to its strike, but most ignored the warning.

Another 23 of the bodies are pulled from a three-story house belonging to the Abu Jamaa family in the southern city of Khan Yunis which was hit on Sunday, raising the overall death toll from a single strike to 28, Qudra says.

In a separate development, the Israeli army says it had killed “more than 10” militants early Monday who had infiltrated southern Israel through two cross-border tunnels.

So far, Palestinian figures show 509 Gazans have been killed and more than 3,150 wounded since the start of the Israeli campaign to stamp out cross-border rocket fire on July 8.

On the Israeli side, 20 people have died, including two civilians killed by rocket fire and 18 soldiers who were killed since the start of a ground operation late on July 17.

Army figures say 53 soldiers were injured on Sunday alone, five of them severely and 13 moderately, while military radio put the overall injury toll at more than 90 soldiers since the ground assault began.

Since the start of Israel’s Operation Protective Edge on July 8 in response to rocket fire from Gaza, Palestinian militants have fired 1,465 mortars and rockets that hit Israel, with the Iron Dome air defense system intercepting another 387, the army said.

Approximately 40 struck Israel on Monday, one of them in the greater Tel Aviv area, while another 11 were shot down, the army said.

— AFP