GAZA CITY: Israel’s operation against Hamas saw one of its bloodiest days on Saturday, with 46 Palestinians killed in Gaza and two Israeli soldiers dying in a clash with militants who infiltrated the Jewish state.

As Israeli warplanes bombarded Gaza from the air, and tanks and bulldozers dug in across a mile-wide strip of Gaza’s eastern frontier, the Palestinian death toll rose to 342, with rights groups warning that a growing number of victims are children.

Israel launches ground operation in Gaza

UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Saturday headed for the region to bolster intense diplomatic efforts aimed at ending 12 days of bloodshed in and around Gaza, even as Israel warned it was ready to intensify its ground assault aimed at destroying a network of cross-border tunnels.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is also looking to secure a ceasefire and was due to travel to regional power Qatar later in the day to see the emir of the Gulf state. It was not clear whether he would also see Hamas’s leader, Khaled Meshaal, who lives in exile in Qatar.

Despite the blistering offensive, Palestinian commandos in central Gaza managed to use one of the tunnels to infiltrate southern Israel, sparking a deadly skirmish in which one militant and two soldiers were killed, the army said.

The soldiers died when the militants fired a machinegun and an anti-tank missile at an army patrol, the army said.

Troops fired back, killing one of them, while the others fled back through the tunnel in an operation claimed by Hamas’s military wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, which said 12 militants had been involved.

Also Saturday, an Israeli Bedouin was killed when a rocket hit his encampment in southern Israel in an attack which also wounded four of his family, among them two young children, police said.

The deaths raised to five the total number of Israelis killed since July 8 — three soldiers and two civilians — in the deadliest confrontation between Israel and Hamas militants since 2009.

In a separate incident late on Friday, militants strapped explosives on to a donkey in another attempt to attack troops.

But soldiers spotted the donkey approaching them “suspiciously” and fired at it, causing it to explode, a statement said.

In Gaza, after a relative lull on Friday, violence picked up again, with intensifying tank shelling and air strikes killing 46 people on Saturday.

So far 342 Palestinians have been killed since Israel on July 8 launched Operation Protective Edge aimed at halting cross-border rocket fire from Gaza.

Published in Dawn, July 20th, 2014