Arab League urges international protection for Gaza

Palestinians gather around the remains of a house, which police said was destroyed in an Israeli air strike, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on July 14, 2014. The Arab League has called on the "international community" to end Israeli air str
Palestinians gather around the remains of a house, which police said was destroyed in an Israeli air strike, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on July 14, 2014. The Arab League has called on the "international community" to end Israeli air strikes on Gaza and to protect Palestinians, ahead of a foreign ministers' meeting later on Monday. -- PHOTO: REUTERS

CAIRO (AFP) - The Arab League has called on the "international community" to end Israeli air strikes on Gaza and to protect Palestinians, ahead of a foreign ministers' meeting later on Monday.

Israel pressed its campaign of punishing raids on Gaza for a seventh day on Monday, but held off from launching a threatened ground incursion as the world intensified efforts to broker a truce.

The Arab League "affirmed the necessity of urgent steps for an immediate end to the Israeli aggression on Gaza and providing protection for the Palestinians", it said in a report to be submitted to the ministerial meeting.

Israeli "air strikes on Gaza have become a matter that cannot be met with silence any more", it said.

The pan-Arab organisation "demands that the international community intervene through its legal and humanitarian institutions to protect the Palestinian people".

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