The Israeli aviation has redoubled the attacks in the early hours of Monday against the Hamas network of tunnels in northern Gaza, which it has again crushed with a wave of 54 fighter-bombers in 35 points, some in inhabited areas.
The most intense military escalation in seven years in the impoverished Mediterranean strip has entered its second week with a balance of more than 200 deaths, without diplomatic mediation attempts having yet forged in a ceasefire.
The streets of the capital of the coastal enclave are empty, report local reporters from news agencies.
Many are still strewn with rubble, such as those of the three buildings where 42 people, including 10 children, were crushed to death on Sunday.
The Army considered this Monday that it was an "abnormal event", when a section of the attacked tunnels collapsed unexpectedly on which they stood.
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The military escalation, which was unleashed last Monday afternoon following the firing of Hamas rockets into the Jerusalem area, has already claimed the lives of at least 201 people in Gaza (including 58 children and 34 women), and caused more than 1,200 injured. In Israel, another 10 people (including two minors) have lost their lives as a result of the Palestinian militias' projectiles, which have injured more than 300 people. The Army spokesman's office maintains that Hamas is responsible for the deaths of civilians by hiding its forces and facilities in inhabited areas. At the same time, he contends that the Palestinian Ministry of Health's reports of civilian casualties in Gaza are inflated.
"I have never seen attacks of this intensity, at home we were all terrified," Mohamed Abded Rabbo, 39, a resident of Gaza City, where hundreds of buildings have been damaged, told France Presse. "My children have not been able to sleep all night while the bombs fell," Palestinian Um Naim, 50, told a Reuters reporter. Hamas spokesman in Gaza, Hazem Qassem, denounced that Israel was "misleading public opinion [about its attacks on military targets] to conceal its deliberate crimes against civilians," Reuters reported.
In the wave of attacks on Monday, one of the leaders of the Islamic Jihad, the commander of the northern area of Gaza for 15 years, Husam Abu Arbid, lost his life, as confirmed by both the Islamist militia and military spokesmen. They blamed him for recent anti-tank rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and military. Israel assures that it has eliminated 130 commanders of Gaza's militias - information that cannot be independently confirmed - and also that it has destroyed houses and political officials, such as that of Jalil Hayya, Hamas' deputy chief in the Strip, or the the home of Yaya Sinwar, head of the Islamist organization inside Gaza.
The Israeli Army figures in more than 3,200 rocket fire in the last week from the Gaza Strip, in which it has described as the largest missile offensive registered so far against its territory, comparable to the total number of launches of the 2014 war, That went on for two months. Of these, at least 1,010 have been intercepted by the Iron Dome system, with an apparent knockdown rate of less than 50%, as another 460 rockets did not reach Israeli territory due to launch failures. The anti-missile system, however, does not activate if the radars detect the fall of the projectile on an uninhabited area, and for this reason the Army maintains that the Iron Dome has had "90% success" in the interceptions.
Israel has intensified aerial bombardment of the Gaza Strip since Friday with the stated, albeit barely visible, objective of destroying a 100-kilometer network of tunnels through which Hamas militiamen move through the north and east of the Gaza Strip. Strip in its operations against Israel. The fighting has also spread to the naval front, where a military spokesman has assured that an Israeli warship had destroyed "a submersible vessel" of Hamas on Monday, although without showing evidence of the presence of the Gaza "submarine" in the Mediterranean.
While the contenders remain locked in the logic of war, the mediation of Egypt, Qatar and the United States is struggling to try to reach a ceasefire agreement, so far without results. The King of Jordan, Abdullah II, said on Sunday that he had undertaken intense diplomatic mediation, in his capacity as custodian of the holy places in Jerusalem, to promote a truce agreement between the contenders.