Death Toll Mounts in Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
July 21, 2014
The Israeli military has confirmed that 4 Israeli soldiers and 10 Palestinian militants were killed inside Israel this morning, after gunmen managed to enter Israeli territory through hidden tunnels. Earlier in the day, 5 Palestinians were killed and 70 others injured when Israeli missiles struck a hospital in Gaza. According to Palestinian physicians, the missiles hit the hospital’s reception, intensive care unit, and operating rooms. Air strikes also killed more than 30 members of two Palestinian families today.
Yesterday was the deadliest of the conflict so far: more than 100 Palestinians were killed, and 13 Israeli soldiers lost their lives in combat in Gaza. Israel sent ground troops into Gaza on July 17 after days of heavy air barrages failed to halt Hamas rocket fire. According to the Israel Defense Forces, the target of the ground operation are Hamas’s network of tunnels, which Palestinian militants use to cross into Israel and carry out attacks, as they did today.
The current Israeli-Hamas hostilities began when a Palestinian boy was murdered on July 2 in an apparent reprisal for the murder of three Israeli teenage boys, whose bodies were found in the West Bank on June 30. An autopsy revealed that the Palestinian boy, Mohammad Abu Khieder, was burned alive, setting off a public outcry in both the West Bank and Gaza as well as in Israel.
The Palestinian death toll from the two-week conflict now exceeds 500, the majority of them civilians. Israel has lost 25 soldiers and 1 civilian.
Additional World Book article:
- Middle East 2007 (a Back in Time article)