Gaza Seventy Killed In A Day As UN Chief Calls Plight 'Harrowing'

An estimated 70 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes over the past day, health officials in Gaza said yesterday, as Israel's campaign in the north of the strip shows no sign of slowing despite the revival of cease-fire talks after a three-month hiatus.

- Bethan McKernan

Separately, one person was killed when a lorry rammed a bus stop in Ramat Hasharon, north of Tel Aviv, yesterday, in what Israeli police are treating as a suspected terrorist attack. About 40 people were injured, some seriously, police said. The driver of the lorry was a Palestinian citizen of Israel, according to police, and was shot by passersby carrying firearms.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military said a Palestinian man was killed after he tried to stab soldiers in the occupied West Bank town of Hizma.

Information about the situation in northern Gaza has become sporadic and difficult to verify as Israel's new ground and aerial assault focusing on Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun enters its fourth week.

Internet and phone services are down for hours at a time, and civil defence workers have been unable to reach the sites of recent strikes due to Israeli forces' ever-tightening siege and attacks on their crews.