Israel withdraws most troops from Gaza as it seeks to wind down monthlong war

Israeli soldiers stand on top of their Merkava tanks along the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip after they pulled out from the Gaza Strip on August 3, 2014. (GIL COHEN MAGEN/AFP/Getty Images)

GAZA, Gaza Strip — Israel withdrew most of its ground troops from the Gaza Strip on Sunday in an apparent winding down of the nearly monthlong operation against Hamas that has left more than 1,800 Palestinians and 60 Israelis dead.

Even as Israel said it was close to completing its mission, heavy fighting raged in parts of Gaza, with at least 10 Palestinians killed in an alleged Israeli airstrike near a U.N. shelter, according to U.N. and Palestinian officials. The U.S. and the United Nations condemned the attack in unusually strong terms.

And with Hamas officials vowing to continue their fight, it remained uncertain whether Israel could unilaterally end the war.

Israel launched its military operation in Gaza on July 8 in response to weeks of heavy rocket fire, carrying out hundreds of airstrikes across the crowded seaside territory. It then sent in ground forces July 17 in what it said was a mission to destroy the tunnels used by Hamas to carry out attacks.

Hamas has fired more than 3,000 rockets into Israel during what has turned into the bloodiest round of fighting ever between the two enemies.

Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israeli military spokesman, confirmed the bulk of ground troops had been pulled out of Gaza after the military concluded it had destroyed most of the tunnel network.

He said Israel had detected some 30 tunnels that were dug along the border for what he called a “synchronized attack” on Israel.

“We’ve caused substantial damage to this network to an extent where we’ve basically taken this huge threat and made it minimal,” he said. The army had thousands of troops in Gaza at the height of the operation.

In southern Israel, armoured vehicles could be seen rolling slowly onto the back of large flatbed trucks near the Gaza border, while soldiers folded flags from atop a tank and rolled up their belongings and sleeping bags.

Lerner said, however, that the operation was not over and that Israel would continue to target Hamas’ rocket-firing capabilities and its ability to infiltrate Israel.

A Palestinian elderly woman sits crying after an Israeli military strike hit a house, killing at least three members of the Wahdan family, on August 3, 2014 in the southern Gaza Strip in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip. (AFP PHOTO/ MOHAMMED ABED/Getty)

While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to press on against Hamas, he is coming under international pressure to halt the fighting because of the heavy civilian death toll.

U.N. officials say more than three-quarters of the dead have been civilians, including the 10 people killed Sunday at a U.N. school that has been converted into a shelter in the southern town of Rafah.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the attack a “moral outrage and a criminal act” and demanded a quick investigation, while the U.S. State Department said Washington was “appalled” by the “disgraceful” attack.

According to witnesses, Israeli strikes hit just outside the main gates of the school. The Red Crescent, a charity, said the attack occurred while people were in line to get food from aid workers. Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra said in addition to the dead, 35 people were wounded.

Robert Turner, director of operations for the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency in Gaza, said the building had been providing shelter for some 3,000 people. He said the strike killed at least one U.N. staffer.

“The locations of all these installations have been passed to the Israeli military multiple times,” Turner said. “They know where these shelters are. How this continues to happen, I have no idea.”

A Palestinian boy, wounded following an Israeli military strike, is treated upon his arrival at the hospital in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, on August 3, 2014. (AFP PHOTO / MAHMUD HAMS/AFP/Getty Images)

Inside the U.N. school’s compound, several bodies, among them children, were strewn across the ground in puddles of blood. “Our trust and our fate are only in the hands of God!” one woman cried.

The Israeli military said it had targeted three wanted militants on a motorcycle in the vicinity and was “reviewing the consequences of this strike.”

In the current round of fighting, U.N. shelters have been struck by fire seven times. UNRWA, the U.N. agency that assists Palestinian refugees, says Israel has been the source of fire in all instances. But it also has said it found caches of rockets in vacant UNRWA schools three times.

Israel accuses Hamas of using civilian areas for cover and says the Islamic militant group is responsible for the heavy death toll because it has been using civilians as “human shields.”

Israeli artillery shells slammed into two high-rise office buildings Sunday in downtown Gaza City, police and witnesses said. Al-Kidra said more than 50 Palestinians were killed, including 10 members of one family in a single strike in the southern Gaza Strip.

Israel said that it attacked 63 sites on Sunday and that nearly 100 rockets and mortars were fired at Israel.

Israeli officials said the military would reduce its ground activities in Gaza but would respond to continued attacks from Gaza with airstrikes.

“It’s not a withdrawal,” said Israeli Cabinet minister Amir Peretz told Channel 10 TV. “It’s setting up a new line that is a more controlled line with the air force doing its work.”

In Gaza, Hamas officials said they would not halt the rocket fire without an end to an Israeli blockade of the territory that has devastated the local economy. Israel imposed the blockade in 2007, saying the measures are needed to keep Hamas from arming.

“If Israel stops unilaterally, Hamas will declare victory and will not grant any security or truce to Israel,” said one senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing internal Hamas deliberations. “In this case, we are going to live under a war of attrition until a political solution is found.”

In Cairo, Egyptian and Palestinian negotiators held talks over a potential cease-fire. After accusing Hamas of repeatedly violating humanitarian cease-fire arrangements, Israel said it would not attend the talks and there was “no point” in negotiating with the militant group.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military death toll rose to 64 after Israel announced that Hadar Goldin, a 23-year-old infantry lieutenant feared captured in Gaza, was actually killed in battle. Some 15,000 people attended his funeral Sunday.

Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon revealed on his Facebook page Sunday that he is a distant relative of Goldin and had known him his whole life. The information was previously kept under wraps while Goldin was feared abducted.

Israeli soldiers celebrate from their armoured personnel carriers (APC) along the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip after they pulled out from the Gaza Strip on August 3, 2014. A Palestinian delegation including Hamas agreed to joint demands to present to Egyptian mediators in Cairo for a truce with Israel, including an end to the Gaza blockade, officials said. AFP PHOTO/GIL COHEN-MAGENGIL COHEN MAGEN/AFP/Getty Images

An Israeli Merkava tank rolls back from the Gaza Strip to an army deployment near Israel’s border with the Palestinian enclave on August 3, 2014. A Palestinian delegation including Hamas agreed joint demands to present to Egyptian mediators in Cairo for a truce with Israel, including an end to the Gaza blockade, officials said. AFP PHOTO / JACK GUEZJACK GUEZ/AFP/Getty Images

KFAR SABA, ISRAEL – AUGUST 03: An honor guard caries the coffin of Israeli Lt. Hadar Goldin during his funeral on August 3, 2014 in Kfar-saba, Israel. Goldin was thought to have been captured during fighting in Gaza, but was later declared killed in action by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). (Photo by Ilia Yefimovich/Getty Images)

The coffin of 23-year-old Israeli Lt. Hadar Goldin, draped in the Israeli flag, is carried by his comrades during his funeral at the military cemetery in the city of Kfar Saba on August 3, 2014, after he was killed on August 1, in combat in Rafah in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army announced the death of Hadar Goldin, the soldier who went missing in the Gaza Strip two days earlier, with no end to the bloodshed in sight. AFP PHOTO/ GALI TIBBONGALI TIBBON/AFP/Getty Images

A girl covers her ears as her mother argues with pro-Israel supporters during a rally near the White House in Washington, Saturday, Aug. 2, 2014, in support of ending the violence in Gaza. A small group of Israeli supporters were surrounded by a larger group of Palestinian supporters who were protesting against the violence in Gaza. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Strong earthquake in southern China kills at least 175, injures more than 1,400

Rescuers carry an injuried child on a stretcher after a 6.1 magnitude earthquake hit the area in Ludian county in Zhaotong, southwest China's Yunnan province on August 3, 2014. (AFP PHOTOSTR/AFP/Getty Images)

By Jack Chang

BEIJING — A strong earthquake in southern China’s Yunnan province toppled thousands of homes on Sunday, killing at least 175 people and injuring more than 1,400.

About 12,000 homes collapsed in Ludian, a densely populated county located around 366 kilometres (277 miles) northeast of Yunnan’s capital, Kunming, China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported.

The magnitude-6.1 quake struck at 4:30 p.m. at a depth of 10 kilometres (6 miles), according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Its epicenter was in Longtoushan township, 23 kilometres (14 miles) southwest of the city of Zhaotong, the Ludian county seat.

Residents run through debris from a landslide during aftershocks following an earthquake that hit an area of Ludian county in Zhaotong in southwest China’s Yunnan province on August 3, 2014. At least 150 people were killed and 1,300 injured after a strong earthquake hit southwest China’s mountainous Yunnan province, state media said. The quake in Zhaotong prefecture, in the province’s northeast, toppled buildings and left residents frantically searching for survivors beneath the rubble, images on social media showed. (AFP/Getty Images)

Ma Liya, a resident of Zhaotong, told Xinhua that the streets there were like a “battlefield after bombardment.” She added that her neighbour’s house, a new two-story building, had toppled, and said the quake was far worse than one that struck the area in 2012 and killed 81 people.

“The aftermath is much, much worse than what happened after the quake two years ago,” Ma said. “I have never felt such strong tremors before. What I can see are all ruins.”

Xinhua said at least 175 people were killed in the quake, with 181 missing and 1,402 injured.

In this photo taken by cellphone and released by China’s Xinhua News Agency, men at rubbles of buildings look for survivors after an earthquake in Ludian County of Zhaotong City in southwest China’s Yunnan Province Sunday, Aug. 3, 2014. A strong earthquake rattled southwest China on Sunday, knocking out communication and power lines and causing people to rush out of buildings, but there were no immediate reports of injuries. (AP Photo/Xinhua/Hu Chao)

At least 122 of the dead were in Ludian, with another 1,300 people injured there, Xinhua reported. It said another 49 people died and 102 were injured in Qiaojia county.

News reports said rescuers were still trying to reach victims in more remote towns Sunday night.

Photos on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social media site, showed rescuers searching through flattened buildings and people injured amid toppled bricks.

Many of the homes that collapsed in Ludian, which has a population of about 429,000, were old and made of brick, Xinhua said, adding that electricity and telecommunications were cut off in the county.
The mountainous region where the quake occurred is largely agricultural, with farming and mining the top industries, and is prone to earthquakes.

Residents gather near damaged houses following an earthquake in an area of Ludian county in Zhaotong in southwest China’s Yunnan province on August 3, 2014.(AFP/Getty Images)

Relief efforts were underway, with more than 2,500 troops dispatched to the disaster region, Xinhua said. The Red Cross Society of China allocated quilts, jackets and tents for those made homeless by the quake, while Red Cross branches in Hong Kong, Macau and neighbouring Sichuan province also sent relief supplies.

Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said the quake was the strongest to hit Yunnan in 14 years.

In 1970, a magnitude-7.7 earthquake in Yunnan killed at least 15,000 people, and a magnitude-7.1 quake in the province killed more than 1,400 in 1974. In September 2012, 81 people died and 821 were injured in a series of quakes in the Yunnan region.

In May 2008, a powerful quake in Sichuan province left nearly 90,000 people dead or missing.

In this photo released by China’s Xinhua News Agency, rescuers transport injured people after an earthquake in Zhaotong City in the densely populated Ludian county in southwest China’s Yunnan Province, Sunday Aug. 3, 2014. The strong earthquake in southern China’s Yunnan province toppled thousands of homes on Sunday, killing at least 175 people and injuring more than 1,400, according to China’s official Xinhua News Agency. (AP Photo / Xinhua, Zhang Guangyu)

10 dead in strike near UN school in Gaza sheltering displaced

By Tamer Ziara And Ibrahim Barzak

RAFAH, Gaza Strip — A United Nations school sheltering displaced people in the southern Gaza Strip was hit Sunday by what a U.N. official said appeared to be an Israeli airstrike, as the military struck the Hamas-ruled territory despite signalling a possible scaling back of its 27-day offensive.

Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra said at least 10 people were killed and 35 wounded after the strike near a boys’ school in the town of Rafah. Robert Turner, the director of operations for the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency in Gaza, said preliminary findings indicated the blast was the result of an Israeli airstrike near the school, which had been providing shelter for some 3,000 people. He said at least one U.N. staffer appeared to be dead.

“We don’t have confirmed details yet but the initial report says that there was some kind of airstrike in a street outside one of our shelters,” Turner said.

Witnesses said the attack happened while people were waiting in line for food supplies. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.

In a chaotic scene inside the compound of the U.N. school, several bodies, among them children, were strewn across the ground in puddles of blood. Bloody footprints stained the ground where people had rushed the wounded into ambulances.

“Our trust and our fate is only in the hands of God!” one woman cried.

Some of the wounded, among them children with bloody head bandages, were transported to the Kuwaiti hospital in Rafah and others were treated in what seemed to be a makeshift clinic underneath a tent.

Several dead bodies, wrapped in white cloth, were lined up on the floor.

A Palestinian man, wounded following an Israeli military strike, arrives at the hospital in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, on August 3, 2014. At least 10 people were killed in a fresh strike on a UN school in southern Gaza which was sheltering Palestinians displaced by an Israeli military offensive, medics said. (AFP PHOTO / MAHMUD HAMS/AFP/Getty Images)

At least six U.N. facilities, including schools sheltering the displaced, have been struck by Israeli fire since the conflict began, drawing international condemnation. In each case Israel has said it was responding to militants launching rockets or other attacks from nearby.

In nearly four weeks of fighting, more than 1,700 Palestinians, mainly civilians, have been killed as well as nearly 70 Israelis, almost all soldiers.

Israel launched an aerial campaign in Gaza on July 8 to try to halt Palestinian rocket fire that has reached major cities, and later sent in troops to dismantle a sophisticated system of cross-border tunnels built by the militants in order to carry out attacks.

Israeli soldiers stand on their Merkava tanks along the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip after they pulled out from the Gaza Strip on August 3, 2014. At least 10 people died in a fresh strike on a UN school in Gaza shortly after Israel confirmed it had begun withdrawing some troops from the war-torn enclave. (AFP PHOTO/GIL COHEN-MAGEN/AFP/Getty Images)

Israel struck several targets in Gaza on Sunday. Artillery shells slammed into two high-rise office buildings in downtown Gaza City and large explosions could be heard seconds apart, police and witnesses said. Al-Kidra said 30 Palestinians were killed Sunday, including nine in a single strike in the southern Gaza Strip. Israel said it carried out 180 strikes Sunday.

While fighting continued, several Israeli tanks and other vehicles were seen leaving Gaza. In a televised address late Saturday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested troops would reassess operations after completing the demolition of Hamas military tunnels under the border. Security officials said the tunnel mission was winding down.

At the same time, Netanyahu warned the territory’s Hamas rulers that they would pay an “intolerable price” if militants continued to fire rockets at Israel and that all options remain on the table.

An Israeli soldier kisses his Merkava tank along the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip after he pulled out from the Gaza Strip on August 3, 2014. At least 10 people died in a fresh strike on a UN school in Gaza shortly after Israel confirmed it had begun withdrawing some troops from the war-torn enclave. (AFP PHOTO/GIL COHEN-MAGEN/AFP/Getty Images)

The Israeli military death toll rose to 64 after Israel announced that Hadar Goldin, a 23-year-old infantry lieutenant feared captured in Gaza, was actually killed in battle. His funeral is later Sunday. Three civilians have been killed on the Israeli side since hostilities began.

Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon revealed on his Facebook page Sunday that he is a distant relative of Goldin.

Israel had earlier said it feared Goldin had been captured by Hamas militants alongside two other soldiers who were killed Friday near Rafah in an ambush that shattered a cease-fire and was followed by heavy shelling that left dozens of Palestinians dead.

Hamas has said it will not stop fighting until Israel and Egypt lift their blockade of Gaza, imposed after the Islamic militant group overran the territory in 2007.

Large swaths of Gaza have been destroyed and some 250,000 people have been forced to flee their homes since the war began on July 8.

Rescue workers search through the rubble of a house, hit by an Israeli military strike that killed at least five members of al-Khattab family, in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, on August 3, 2014. At least 10 people were killed in a fresh strike on a UN school in southern Gaza which was sheltering Palestinians displaced by an Israeli military offensive, medics said. (AFP PHOTO / MAHMUD HAMS/AFP/Getty Images)

Lebanese army says 8 soldiers killed in ongoing cross-border raid on town by Syrian rebels

Smoke billows from the Lebanese town of Arsal, a Sunni Muslim town near the Syrian border in eastern Lebanon, Saturday, Aug 2, 2014. Rebels fighting in Syria�s civil war crossed into Lebanon and raided a border town Saturday, killing and capturing security force members in the most serious incursion into the tiny country during its neighbor�s 3-year-old conflict. (AP Photo)

By Diaa Hadid

BEIRUT — Syrian rebels who crossed into Lebanon and raided a border town have killed eight Lebanese soldiers, the military said Sunday, as clashes there continued overnight in the most serious spillover yet in the tiny country from its neighbour’s civil war.

The fighting took place in Arsal, some 90 kilometres (55 miles) from the capital, Beirut, where local television footage showed wailing ambulances racing into town and soldiers standing guard just outside its limits.

Lebanese military forces sealed off the area, preventing reporters from approaching the town.

The fighting began Saturday, hours after the army said troops detained Syrian citizen Imad Ahmad Jomaa, who identified himself as a member of Syria’s al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front. The National News Agency said Jomaa was detained as he was being brought to a hospital in Lebanon after being wounded while fighting Syrian troops.

The Nusra Front is one of the most powerful groups fighting to overthrow the rule of Syrian President Bashar Assad. It has a strong presence in northern and central Syria, as well around its eastern border with Lebanon.

Lebanon’s Sunni community, including in Arsal, broadly support the Sunni rebels fighting against Assad. Shiites, like those belonging to Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group, typically back Assad.

Tens of thousands of Syrian refugees live in and around Arsal. Rebel fighters sometimes use the town as a base.

Syria’s civil war has spilled over into Lebanon on multiple occasions, and inflamed sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shiites, leaving scores dead. However, previous rebel raids never went so deeply into Lebanese territory. Rebels also directly challenged Lebanese security forces for the first time.

Jomaa was wounded as an ambush took place that killed dozens of opposition fighters, activists said. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Syrian troops and members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group ambushed the rebels in the Qalamoun region that borders Arsal, killing at least 50 of them.

It said seven Syrian troops and fighters of the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah were killed in the fighting.

Government troops backed by Hezbollah fighters have seized nearly all the strategic Qalamoun region since launching an offensive there last November, severing rebel supply lines from neighbouring Lebanon.

The Syrian uprising began as peaceful protests against Assad in March 2011, but escalated into an insurgency when pro-government forces violently cracked down on dissent. Over 170,000 people, mostly combatants, have been killed in Syria in more than three years of fighting, activists say.

Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic brace for heavy rains from Tropical Storm Bertha

A surfer enters the water to take advantage of the high waves in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Saturday, Aug. 2, 2014. .(AP Photo/Ricardo Arduengo)

By Danica Coto

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Tropical Storm Bertha pushed just south of Puerto Rico on Saturday as it unleashed heavy rains and strong winds across the region, knocking out power on some islands in the eastern Caribbean.

The storm’s maximum sustained winds dropped slightly to 45 mph (75 kph), and slow strengthening was expected by Sunday night. Bertha was centred about 90 miles (150 kilometres) east of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and was moving west-northwest at 22 mph (35 kph) late Saturday afternoon.

The storm passed southwest Puerto Rico and was headed toward the eastern Dominican Republic on Saturday night. As much as 3 to 5 inches (8-13 centimetres) of rain was forecast for Puerto Rico, with isolated amounts of up to 8 inches (20 centimetres).

Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla warned of flooding, landslides and swollen rivers, which he urged people not to try and cross.

“It’s something that sounds obvious but it happens so often,” he said. “It’s not the time to take risks.”

Tourists wear rain coats as they walk towards the 16th century Spanish fort El Morro, under cloudy skies in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Saturday, Aug. 2, 2014. (AP Photo/Ricardo Arduengo)

Police said a man is recovering after lightning struck next to him as he emerged from a tent in the northeast coastal town of Luquillo. Garcia initially had said the man was a surfer.

Authorities also reported several downed trees across the island’s eastern region and two downed electrical posts. Some 9,000 people were without power and more than 1,300 without water. The lights also went out at the island’s emergency management agency during a press conference Saturday morning.

The heaviest rains were falling in the island’s southern and eastern regions, with authorities warning people to stay indoors.

Jose Colon Rivera, 50, who lives in a rural area near the southern town of Cayey, said in a phone interview that he could hear the wind whistling loudly through his zinc roof.

“If anything happens, I can always run,” said Colon, who was watching wrestling on TV as he waited for the storm to pass.

Meanwhile, in the nearby southeast coastal town of Arroyo, some 180 people remained at a government shelter, the majority of them athletes participating in a youth baseball tournament.

Ingrid Vila, gubernatorial chief of staff, said Puerto Rico’s main international airport remained open but that several flights have been cancelled.

Two women walk with the protection of an umbrella in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, Saturday, Aug. 2, 2014. (AP Photo/Ricardo Arduengo)

Authorities closed El Yunque rainforest, a popular tourist attraction in northeast Puerto Rico, and ferry rides to the neighbouring islands of Culebra and Vieques were cancelled.

Downed trees limbs also were reported across St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where a coastal buoy south of St. Thomas recorded wind gusts of 72 mph (115 kph).

Tropical storm warnings were in effect for Puerto Rico, the eastern Dominican Republic, southeastern Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos islands. A tropical storm watch was in effect for central Bahamas.

Authorities in the Dominican Republic banned vessels from operating along the country’s east coast, which is popular with tourists. The sun shone brightly there ahead of the storm, but those who ferry hundreds of tourists a day to the nearby island of Saona remained cautious.

“Our fear was to take customers and then have the storm trap them on the island,” said Davis de la Cruz, marketing manager for tourism company Caribbean Saona.

On Friday, Bertha passed just north of the French Caribbean island of Martinique, where it knocked out power in several areas. Government spokeswoman Audrey Hamann said in a phone interview that some 150,000 homes were affected by outages but that no injuries or damage were reported.

In Dominica, the storm left hundreds of people without power along the island’s eastern region.

Antigua-based regional airline LIAT cancelled several flights in Dominica, St. Lucia, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Seaborne Airlines also cancelled flights in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, while the U.S. Coast Guard closed ports in the U.S. Virgin Islands and eastern and southern Puerto Rico.

The storm may bring rain to a drought-hit area of southern Puerto Rico, authorities said.

It rained less than an inch in June in Puerto Rico, compared with the month’s average of more than 4 inches. July saw more rain, but the 3.40 inches (8.64 centimetres) that fell was still down from the average of 4.76 inches (12 centimetres).