News Desk :Israel bombarded Gaza on Saturday after accusing Hamas of destroying a humanitarian ceasefire by capturing a soldier whom the Islamists say was probably killed in Israeli shelling.Israeli aircraft have struck a major university and other targets in the Gaza Strip as troops continued their military offensive the Palestinian enclave for a 26th day.A large part of the Islamic University in Gaza City was damaged by Saturday morning’s air strike.As the conflict raged into a 26th day on Friday following the collapse after only two hours of the truce,US President Barack Obama asked Hamas to release of captured Israeli soldier.Obama said: “If [Hamas] are serious about trying to resolve this situation, that soldier needs to be unconditionally released, as soon as possible.”Meanwhile, The US Congress on Friday also passed a $225m (£134m) bill to help bolster Israel’s war capacity.Following the quick collapse of the cease-fire in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the White House not to force a truce with Palestinians on Israel.Sources familiar with conversations between Netanyahu and senior US officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, say the Israeli leader advised the Obama administration “not to ever second guess me again” on the matter. The officials also said Netanyahu said he should be “trusted” on the issue and about the unwillingness of Hamas to enter into and follow through on cease-fire talks.The Obama administration on Friday condemned “outrageous” violations of an internationally brokered Gaza cease-fire by Palestinians and called the apparent abduction of an Israeli soldier a “barbaric” action.The strong reaction came as top Israeli officials questioned the effort to forge the truce, accusing the US and the United Nations of being naive in assuming the Hamas movement would adhere with its terms. The officials also blamed the Gulf state of Qatar for not forcing the Hamas to comply.With the cease-fire in tatters fewer than two hours after it took effect with an attack that killed two Israeli troops and left a third missing, Obama demanded that those responsible release the soldier.Obama and other US officials did not directly blame Hamas for the abduction. But they made clear they hold Hamas responsible for, or having influence over, the actions of all factions in the Gaza Strip. The language was a distinct change from Thursday when Washington was focused on the deaths of Palestinian civilians.”If they are serious about trying to resolve this situation, that soldier needs to be unconditionally released as soon as possible,” Obama told reporters. He added that it would be difficult to revive the cease-fire without the captive’s release.”It’s going to be very hard to put a cease-fire back together again if Israelis and the international community can’t feel confident that Hamas can follow through on a cease-fire commitment,” he said. His comment reflected uncertainty in the US and elsewhere that Hamas was actually responsible for the incident or if some other militant group was to blame.The chances of the sides halting fire seemed remote after Israel said it believed Hamas had captured a 23-year-old soldier in a Friday morning ambush near the southern Gaza city of Rafah.Immediately afterwards, Israel began intensely bombing the Rafah area in shelling that is still ongoing, with medics saying it killed 114 people in 24 hours, 57 of them since midnight (2100 GMT Friday).The violence raised the overall death toll in Gaza to 1,654, the vast majority of them civilians, medics said, with the number of wounded at more than 8,900.The alleged capture of Second Lieutenant Hadar Goldin drew sharp condemnation from the United Nations and the White House, who had jointly brokered the abortive 72-hour truce, and who demanded he be immediately released.Israel has said it believes Goldin was snatched in an ambush that involved a suicide bomber, who killed two other soldiers, and has placed the blame squarely on Hamas.Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, acknowledged its men had staged an ambush early Friday in which soldiers were killed, but denied holding the missing man, saying the attackers were missing and presumed dead.”At 7:00 am on Friday, our mujahedeen started an exchange of fire with the occupation forces… east of Rafah, and a lot of Israeli soldiers were killed and injured,” the group said.”We have lost contact with the mujahedeen unit that was in that ambush, and we think that all the fighters in this unit were killed by Zionist shelling along with the soldier, who the enemy says is missing, assuming our combatants captured this soldier during the fighting,” it said.”Until now, we in Qassam have no knowledge of the missing soldier, or his whereabouts or the circumstances of his disappearance.” Israel said it was focusing its search for Goldin on the outskirts of the sprawling city of Rafah, an area home to some 210,00 Palestinians.
