Gaza Deaths Top 300

In his Gaza home, Ramez al-Madhoun listens Saturday to the thunder of
Israeli tank shells battering the neighborhood -- some a little less
than a mile away, some closer.
A few miles south of him, Gazan militants' rockets stream into the sky
-- about seven in 15 minutes -- toward Israel.
The tanks are gunning for tunnels leading into Israel and the Gazan
attack squads that use them.
Al-Madhoun says he feels safer during Israeli airstrikes.
"If it was an airstrike, it would be more of a precision strike, but
the tanks shells are more dangerous, they are destroying more than the
airstrikes," he says.
Every 30 seconds to a minute a shell comes down in or around Beit
Lahya. The local imam has told residents to stay home and pray,
because the shelling has made it to dangerous to go outside,
al-Madhoun says.
Since morning, 11 more people have died in Gaza, according to the
health ministry. The toll there has reached 318 since the Israeli
military operation Protective Edge began July 8, the ministry says.
Most of those killed have been civilians, according to the United Nations.
Attacking Israel
In southeastern Israel, a rocket from Gaza crashed into Negev, killing
an Israeli early Saturday, the Israel Defense Force reports. The
rocket wounded four others, a hospital spokesman says

One of them is a 3-month-old baby; its wounds are severe.
Back in Gaza, the al-Qassam Brigade announces it has sent an attack
squad to Eshkol, just on the other side of the border. The IDF has the
entire district -- or regional council -- under military lockdown to
avoid Israeli civilian deaths.
But next to Eshkol's Kibbutz Beeri, a militant squad pops up out of
tunnel to carry out an attack. They quickly cross paths with an IDF
patrol and a firefight erupts, the IDF says.
A Palestinian militant is killed and four Israeli soldiers are
injured. The IDF pushes the rest of the attackers back into Gaza,
where the air force pursues them further.
Then sirens howl an incoming rocket warning over Eshkol. The two
missiles fall into open areas.
1,663 rockets, 2,300 strikes
Since Operation Protective Edge began, militants in Gaza have launched
1,663 rockets, the IDF said in a statement Saturday. Israeli rocket
defense system Iron Dome has intercepted 346 of them.
The IDF has struck "2,300 terror targets" in Gaza, the statement said.
In its recently launched ground operations, the IDF targeted 95 rocket
launching sites and 13 tunnels.
Al-Aqsa TV reported Friday that Israel had sent text messages to many
Palestinians telling them of safe corridors to reach central Gaza.
Before the land incursion, the IDF dropped leaflets in 14 areas of
Gaza, urging residents to temporarily leave their homes. But many have
nowhere to go in the small, impoverished strip of land. Border
crossings with Israel and Egypt are closed

"The IDF is a moral military without peer; it does not aspire to harm
any innocent person," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said
in prepared remarks before a special Cabinet meeting Friday. "We are
operating only against terrorist targets and we regret any inadvertent
civilian casualties. It is the terrorist organizations -- which attack
our cities and our civilians and use their civilians as human shields
-- that bear the responsibility for casualties among noncombatants."
Health ministry: 72 of the dead in Gaza are children
The flash of assorted ordnance illuminated Gaza's night sky on Friday
as Israeli forces and Hamas militants clashed throughout the
27-mile-long Palestinian territory.
With fighting reported all along the coastal enclave, casualties
poured into Gaza City's Shifaa Hospital, including children, after
Israeli artillery shelled east of the city, physicians told the
Hamas-run Al-Aqsa TV.
Children comprise 72 of the death toll, said Gaza health ministry
spokesman Dr. Ashraf al-Qedra. About 2,290 people have been injured in
Gaza in the fighting.
Hospitals say they are running out of emergency medical supplies.
A whole family of eight died when Israeli artillery shells hit their
northern Gaza home, the health ministry said.
It's the region where al-Madhoun lives, which borders on two sides
with Israel. He can hear automatic gunfire in the distance.
On Friday, an Israeli soldier died nearby in friendly fire, the IDF
said. Seven soldiers were wounded.
Friday's fighting was intense enough to double the number of
internally displaced people to 40,000 from 22,000, the U.N. said

That number could grow.

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