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Day 11- First Soldier Killed, Egypt Blasts Hamas, Erdogan Cries “Genocide,” Israel Targets Tunnels

by TheTower.org Staff |

The eleventh day of Operation Protective Edge is over.

Today The Tower covered the first day of Israel’s ground incursion into Gaza.

Last night, the IDF entered Gaza and targeted the tunnels Hamas has built to sneak terrorists into Israel. Israel struck terrorists who infiltrated through such a tunnel on Thursday, preventing a major terror attack. One soldier, Eitan Barak, was killed in the fighting overnight.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri blasted Hamas for refusing to agree to the ceasefire that Israel had accepted. Shukri said that Hamas’ intransigence would cost “at least 40 Palestinian souls [that] would have been saved.”

One of the few world leaders who supports Hamas, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, accused Israel of committing “genocide.” His comments threatened to inflame an already combustible situation in which crowds would later attack Israeli diplomatic missions throughout the country, egged on by members of Erdogan’s AKP party.

Israel’s top political leaders said Friday that the country’s ground operations would be aimed “at the terrorist tunnels from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory.” Thursday’s infiltration was seen as a trigger that “had flipped the Israeli political debate in favor of the attack.”

At the end of the first day of ground operations, the IDF announced that it had discovered 21 tunnels, arrested 13 terrorists and killed 17. The suspects arrested could provide Israel with vital intelligence as it continues its operations.

Hamas has issued social media guidelines in order to control messaging coming out of Gaza, thereby skewing media coverage against Israel.

[Photo: idfnadesk / YouTube ]

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