A hoped-for quiet was continually shattered over the weekend as fighting between the IDF and Hamas continued on Saturday for a sixth day.
A man was killed Saturday in Ramat Gan after Hamas fired close to 30 rockets toward central Israel in a large afternoon barrage. Some 278 rockets were launched from Gaza between 7 a.m.-7 p.m. on Saturday with about 40 of them falling short.
The IAF continued to bombard Gaza over the weekend, striking dozens of targets belonging to terror groups in the coastal enclave.
It also struck a high-rise building that housed several media outlets, including Al Jazeera and the AP. The residents of the building, which also housed a number of apartments and other offices, were warned ahead of the strike to evacuate the building.
The IDF said the building contained “military assets of the military intelligence” of Hamas.
With talks of a ceasefire continuing to gain momentum, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Hamas that “it’s not over yet” and that the group has no place to hide.
“I said we would strike Hamas and other terror groups with significant blows, and we are doing so,” Netanyahu said on Friday. “In the last day we attacked underground targets. Hamas thought it could hide there, but it can’t.
“Hamas leaders think they can escape from our grasp. They cannot escape. We can reach them everywhere, all of their people – and we will continue to do so.”
The heavy rocket fire toward the South also claimed the life of an 87-year-old woman after she suffered head injuries while running to a shelter. Another man in his 50s was seriously injured after his home suffered a direct hit by a rocket in Ashkelon.
Sirens sounded in Kiryat Gat during the funeral on Friday of five-year-old Ido Avigail, who was killed when a rocket made a direct impact on his home in Sderot, penetrating its safe room where he and his family were sheltering.
A total of 11 civilians and one soldier have been killed since the fighting started on Monday.
The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said 136 Palestinians have died since the fighting began, including 31 children, and 830 have been injured. Israel maintains that the large majority of those who have been killed are either members of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad or were killed by Hamas rocket fire that landed inside the enclave.
Over 2,000 rockets and mortars have been fired towards Israel from the Gaza Strip since the fighting began.
OTHER ROCKETS on Saturday fell in the Arab-Israeli town of Taibe and near Ramallah and Tulkarm. Shrapnel also fell near the Ramat Gan Safari.
Several homes in Israel sustained direct hits from rockets launched during overnight salvos Friday and Saturday morning.
An apartment in a high-rise residential building in Beersheba was heavily damaged Saturday morning. No one was injured since the family had been sleeping in the bomb shelter.
Another rocket damaged the electric grid in the southern part of Beersheba on Friday afternoon as it was undergoing repairs, according to the Beersheba City Council. The outage left tens of thousands without electricity.
A car caught fire on Friday afternoon after sustaining a direct hit from a rocket in the Beersheba region. One person was lightly injured and received medical treatment on site. Another rocket fell close to the Air Force Technical School, also located in the south of the city.
In Ashdod, which was the target of several rocket barrages overnight, the sixth floor of a multi-story residential building was hit as was a factory in the city’s port.
Homes in Sderot were also damaged, one extensively, when rockets were fired towards the city. Another rocket damaged a store.
A home in the Eshkol Regional Council was also destroyed after it was hit by a rocket early on Thursday evening.
THE IDF said that the high-rise news outlet building “housed the offices of civilian media, which the terrorist organization Hamas hides behind and uses as human shields. The terror organization Hamas deliberately places its military assets in the heart of the civilian population in the Gaza Strip,” the IDF said, adding that “prior to the attack, the IDF warned the civilians who were in the building and gave them sufficient time to evacuate.”
The AP said that while they received a warning that the building would be hit, “we are shocked and horrified that the Israeli military would target and destroy the building housing AP’s bureau and other news organizations in Gaza. They have long known the location of our bureau and knew journalists were there.”
Calling it an “incredibly disturbing development,” AP said that the news agency is seeking information from the Israeli government and US State Department.
“We narrowly avoided a terrible loss of life. A dozen AP journalists and freelancers were inside the building and thankfully we were able to evacuate them in time. The world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of what happened today.”
Hamas later warned the residents of Tel Aviv and central Israel to expect a response for that airstrike.
Among the other targets the air force struck were rocket-launching sites, including the long-range launcher used to fire rockets on Jerusalem that began the latest escalation of violence on Monday.
Other targets included a number of surface-to-surface missile launch sites, terror cells, a Hamas intelligence center, observation posts on land in and at sea off of the southern Gaza Strip and anti-tank missile launch sites and cells as well as armed drones were downed by the Iron Dome missile defense system.
Aircraft also struck the house of Hamas deputy leader in Gaza, Khalil al-Hayya, in addition to the operational office belonging to Hamas’s head of security forces Tawfiq Abu Naim in the Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City, which was used as the military infrastructure command and control center. Two apartments belonging to Hamas naval force operatives Muhammed Abu Shala and Fares Abu Shukran that served as weapons storage warehouses were also hit.
In one strike on the Shati refugee camp, 10 people including eight children were killed. The IDF said that the strike was against an apartment that “serves as terror infrastructure” for Hamas.
“The IDF takes precautions to minimize possible harm to civilians during its military activities,” it said.
Hamas later said it fired dozens of rockets towards Tel Aviv in response to “the massacre of women and children at the Shati refugee camp.”
On Friday morning, Israel carried out one of the largest bombardments of Hamas and PIJ since the fighting started.
In a 40-minute-long air campaign which began around midnight, some 160 aircraft dropped about 450 missiles on 150 targets belonging to a network of tunnels dug by the terror group, known as “the Metro,” under Gaza city.
Speaking to reporters, IDF Spokesperson Brig.-Gen. Hidai Zilberman called the underground network a “strategic asset” to the group that used the kilometers of tunnels in northern Gaza to move weapons and fighters.
The military is still working to determine the extent of the damage.
Tanks, artillery cannons and troops from the Golani Brigade stationed along the border also carried out barrages toward Hamas targets when they came out to attack Israeli targets. A total of 500 artillery shells and another 50 tank shells were used.
No troops crossed into Gaza, Zilberman said.
On Friday, IAF aircraft also targeted the homes of several high-ranking Hamas commanders, a cell of PIJ operatives in northern Gaza, a Hamas anti-tank missile cell as it prepared to fire a missile, a Hamas rocket launching cell in northern Gaza, several Hamas observation posts in northern and central Gaza, and rocket launch sites.
The IDF also bombed Hamas weapons depots along with other weapons and launching sites. A senior PIJ anti-tank guided-missile commander was also killed, the IDF said, and several drones were downed.
The bombardments by the IDF are aimed at placing pressure on Hamas, Zilberman said.