News Desk :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. Anti Israel protesters around the world voiced their fury at the rising toll, in Gaza with demonstrations in France, Germany and Arab parts of Israel seizing on the motif of dead children, holding up red-spattered dolls, or stained shrouds, to drive home their point.It came as the UN confirmed that at least 296 Palestinian children have been killed since the offensive began on July 8.UNICEF, the UN children’s agency, said it only included deaths it could definitely verify in the total, which is around a third of its total reported casualties. On Sunday an Israeli air strike killed 10 children and wounded about 30 others on Sunday in a U.N.-run school in the southern Gaza Strip, a Palestinian official said, as dozens died in Israeli shelling of the enclave and Hamas fired rockets at Israel.The sun rose today over another day of violence in Gaza as at least 30 people – nine from the same family in Rafah – were killed in Israeli shelling despite reports the military’s mission was coming to an end. The Israeli military said it was looking into the reported attack, the second to hit a school in less than a week.Israeli media, on the 27th day of the fighting, reported that most Israeli troops had pulled out of Gaza, and Reuters TV footage showed a column of Israeli tanks and dozens of infantrymen leaving the enclave.Israeli tanks were seen leaving the densely-packed, rubble-strewn Gaza Strip before the strikes on the 27th day of the conflict, as security sources said they had destroyed the vast majority of militants’ tunnels.But few had seen much hope of peace as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Hamas would pay an ‘intolerable price’ for any further rocket attacks.Artillery shells slammed into two high-rise office buildings in central Gaza City and the town of Rafah came under heavy fire.Even though IDF forces were seen withdrawing from parts of Gaza yesterday and this morning amid reports the Hamas tunnel network had been mostly destroyed, Netanyahu emphasised Israel was determined not to back down. He said: ‘The military will prepare for continuing action in according to our security needs. We promised to return the quiet to Israel and that is what we will do.The UN has warned Gaza’s medical facilities are ‘on the verge of collapse’ after a third of its hospitals, 14 clinics and 29 ambulances were damaged.Two-fifths of Gaza’s medics are unable to get to work because of the violence and treatment is thrown into chaos by anonymous false alarms of impending attacks.Dr. Ambrogio Manenti, acting Head of Office of the UN World Health Organization, said: ‘The ability to provide necessary healthcare is being severely compromised. This British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said he had received thousands of emails from the British public expressing horror at the scenes in Gaza as protests raged outside Parliament and the Israeli embassy in Kensington, west London.Eight UN aid workers and at least two Palestinian Red Crescent volunteers have now been reported as killed, it was reported.Two-fifths of the sixth-most densely populated area on Earth is now a war zone, with a quarter of the Gazan population displaced, the report added.Israel unleashed a series of air strikes which completely destroyed Gaza City’s Imam Al Shafaey mosque and damaged the historic al-Omeri mosque in the nearby city of Jabalia.Dozens of Palestinians were killed in bombardment and shelling in and around Rafah, where Lieutenant Goldin had gone missing.Elsewhere in Gaza, Palestinian officials reported more than 150 airstrikes including several against mosques and one against the Hamas-linked Islamic University in Gaza City.
