Tel Aviv

A group of 84 Romanian nationals and their families have asked to return back home from Gaza Strip on Monday, with the group to get to Romania later in the day, the Foreign Affairs Ministry announced in a release to AGERPRES.

The Romanians will be flown back home by two Defence Ministry aircraft — a C 130 Hercules and C 27 J Spartan respectively, it added.

Four Bulgarian nationals have been evacuated from the Gaza Strip, Bulgaria's Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced.

The Bulgarians contacted the embassy in Tel Aviv and the diplomatic office in Ramallah, which organized their evacuation on July 13.

Israel harshened its campaign against Gaza July 13, warning Palestinians in the north to flee after marines mounted a ground attack, and diplomatic efforts to halt the bloodshed intensified.        

Israeli marines mounted a first ground assault on Gaza early July 13, further escalating a deadly six-day offensive hours after the U.N. Security Council unanimously called for a ceasefire.

Israel pounded Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip on July 12 for a fifth day, killing nine people including two disabled women according to medics, and showed no sign of pausing despite international pressure to negotiate a ceasefire.

Israeli warplanes kept up deadly raids on Gaza July 11 but failed to stop Palestinian militants firing rockets across the border, as the United States offered to help negotiate a truce.

With the violence growing worse, U.S. President Barack Obama in a phone call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his government was willing to broker a ceasefire.

Turkey, under Mssrs Erdoğan and Davutoğlu, has always had to defend itself against Zionist aggression through peaceful, often pacifist, means. Erdoğan once politely ignored it when the then Israeli President Shimon Peres roared at him that: “Turks know best how to kill.”

The Israeli air force bombed 160 targets in the Gaza Strip overnight as it pressed a widescale campaign to stop volleys of Palestinian rocket fire, an army official said Wednesday.
      

Three of six Israelis held over the abduction and killing of a Palestinian teenager last week have confessed to the murder, a source close to the investigation said on July 6.
      

Israel launched a series of air strikes on Gaza early on July 7 to quell Hamas rocket fire, and the Islamist group's armed wing said seven of its gunmen were killed, making it the deadliest day for Hamas since a 2012 cross-border war with the Jewish state.