Intensifying its military offensive in Gaza, Israel today pounded Hamas targets in the coastal strip with air strikes and tanks, killing at least eight Palestinians amid reports of a new Egyptian ceasefire proposal calling for an immediate halt in attacks.
Six of the dead Palestinians were killed in Israeli air strikes on the 49th day of the war while two others succumbed to wounds sustained in earlier attacks, Gaza medics said.
In the latest air strikes, a woman and a child were killed after Israel targeted a home in Beit Lahiya.
Israel continued to flatten mosques destroying the Omar Ibn Abd al-Aziz mosque in Beit Hanoun and Ali Ibn Abu Talib mosque in Gaza City accusing militants of using them to store and carry out attacks against it.
At least 2,124 Palestinians and 68 Israelis, all but four of them soldiers, have been killed since Israel launched Operation Protective Edge in Gaza on July 8 with the avowed objective of stopping rocket attacks emanating from there.
Gaza militants fired some 40 rockets on Israel today, causing some damage to property but no casualties.
The UN says 70 per cent of the Palestinian victims were civilians, and that among the dead were 478 children.
About 10,500 Palestinians have been injured while another 460,000 have fled their homes in Gaza, over a quarter of the densely populated enclave’s 1.8 million population.
Meanwhile, media reports early today indicated that progress had been made in ceasefire talks in Cairo between Palestinians and Israel with an Egyptian proposal calling for a swift return to the negotiating table within 48 hours for a long-term truce to be worked out over a period of one month.
Palestinian news agency Ma’an reported that new developments “could clear the path for an agreement”.
The agency quoted Khaled al-Batsh, an Islamic Jihad official as saying that “a ceasefire is supposed to be signed within a few hours”.
Hamas official Osama Hamdan reportedly said that “there has been positive and fast progress in ceasefire talks in the past few hours”.
No response was immediately available from the Israeli side as officials only said that “our position is consistent and we would not negotiate under fire”.
But Israeli Science Minister Yaakov Peri, an observer at the security cabinet and former head of the Shin Bet internal security agency, said if the rocket fire stopped, it was likely talks would resume.
“If a ceasefire goes into effect, and it sticks, there is a good chance that the prime minister will instruct the delegation to return to the talks in Cairo,” he said adding that it would be over a “lean arrangement”.