One of the mosques destroyed was allegedly being used for meetings between members of Hamas' military wing in southern Gaza, a second was used to store terrorist infrastructure in southern Gaza, while the third in the north was used as a meeting point for Hamas members, security sources said.
Israel Defence Forces (IDF) targets included underground rocket launchers, facilities for storing and manufacturing weapons, and apartments used to coordinate terrorist attacks, security sources said.
Gaza militants have fired a record number of rockets at Israel since the collapse of the ceasefire, they added. Sixty-eight Israelis, mostly soldiers, have been killed so far in the fighting.
The war is the deadliest in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the 2005 end of the second Intifada, or uprising.
Meanwhile, Egypt today invited the Israelis and Palestinians to continue indirect negotiations in Cairo.
“Both sides are invited by Egypt to accept a ceasefire on a non-fixed-term and to continue the indirect negotiations in Cairo to reach an agreement on the current issues,” said a statement by the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The call from the foreign ministry came shortly after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi in Cairo. The Israeli government had no immediate comment on the Egyptian proposal.
A previous round of truce talks collapsed on Tuesday as the deadly six-week conflict between Israel and its Islamist foe Hamas resumed.
Since the truce collapsed, 84 Palestinians and a four-year-old Israeli boy have died in the fighting. Abbas said that his primary concern is ending the bloodshed immediately in Gaza.
“We must first stop the bloodshed and then address providing humanitarian aid to the strip,” Abbas said.
Abbas also mentioned that he is meeting with several Arab states along with Arab League chief, Nabil El-Arabi, to agree on what will be discussed in future negotiations with the United States.
