Gaza: Two cameramen from Hamas-owned Al Aqsa TV were among six people killed in Israeli air raids on the Gaza Strip, raising Tuesday’s death toll to 20, ahead of possible truce declaration, a Hamas spokesman said.
Health officials said a total of 125 people had been killed and over 1,000 wounded since Israel began its relentless bombing campaign on November 14.
“Two cameramen from Al Aqsa TV have been killed: Mahmoud Komi and Hossam Salama,” health ministry spokesman Ashraf Al Qudra told AFP, saying the strike hit a car in Gaza City’s Nasser area that was clearly marked as a press vehicle.
The Israeli army had no comment on the apparent targeting of a press vehicle.
Qudra said three more people were killed in Gaza City’s Shejaiya neighbourhood, and another person died in an air strike on the northern town of Beit Hanun. “That takes the total today to 20,” he told AFP.
An Israeli soldier was killed by rocket fire from the Gaza, a military spokesman said. His death raises to four the number of Israelis killed in Gaza rocket fire since November 14, but only the first army fatality.
Meanwhile, the head of the Arab League said on a visit to Gaza that the world should focus on ending the Israeli occupation instead of finding a truce to the current violence.
“The real problem is not a truce,” Nabeel Al Arabi told reporters as he led Arab nation foreign ministers to Gaza on a solidarity mission.
“The real problem that the Arab and Islamic countries and all friendly countries in the world must focus on is ending the occupation,” the Arab League chief said.
Israel’s air force, meanwhile, dropped leaflets across several districts of Gaza City urging people to evacuate their homes “immediately” amid fears of an imminent ground invasion.
“For your own safety, you are required to immediately evacuate your homes and move toward Gaza City centre,” the one-page Arabic-language leaflet said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a news conference in occupied Jerusalem with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that Israel would be a “willing partner” to any long-term deal that ended rocket fire on Israeli cities.
The reports came as US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was heading for Jerusalem. US President Barack Obama, meanwhile, again underscored the need for a de-escalation in the crisis during a telephone call from Air Force One with Egyptian President Mohammad Mursi.
Mursi had earlier said that he expected the fighting to end “within hours.”
Meanwhile, masked gunmen publicly shot dead six suspected collaborators with Israel in a large Gaza City intersection, witnesses said. An Associated Press reporter saw a large mob surrounding five of the bloodied corpses shortly after the killing.
Some in the crowd stomped and spit on the bodies. A sixth corpse was tied to a motorcycle and dragged through the streets as people screamed, “Spy! Spy!”
Ezz Al Deen Al Qassam Brigades claimed responsibility in a large handwritten note attached to a nearby electricity pole. Hamas said the six were killed because they gave Israel information about fighters and rocket launching sites.
Israel relies on a network of local informers to identify its targets in Gaza.
The six were killed on Tuesday afternoon in Gaza City’s Shaikh Radwan neighborhood.
Witnesses said a van stopped in the intersection, and four masked men pushed the six suspected informers out of the vehicle. Salim Mahmoud, 18, said the gunmen ordered the six to lie face down in the street and then shot them dead.
One body was tied by a cable to the back of a motorcycle and dragged through the streets. A number of gunmen on motorcycles rode along as the body was pulled past a house of mourning for victims of an Israeli airstrike.
