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Israel shells UN office in Gaza

UN operations suspended; terrified residents flee as toll nears 1,100

AFP, AP, Gaza City
Israeli strikes set media and UN buildings and a hospital ablaze yesterday as tanks rolled deep into Gaza cities even amid hope that the war on Hamas that has killed nearly 1,100 people may soon end.
Hundreds of terrified civilians, many gripping wailing children, fled the advancing Israeli troops inside Gaza City as warplanes pummelled the battered Palestinian enclave where half the population is under the age of 18.
While battles raged on the ground, Egypt kept up Western-backed efforts to end the 20-day-old war that was launched on the Islamist Hamas in response to rocket fire and that has killed an estimated 600 civilians.
Shortly after UN chief Ban Ki-moon arrived in Israel, a raid hit the main UN compound in Gaza, wounding three employees, setting fire to a warehouse filled with tonnes of aid, and leading the UNRWA agency to partly suspend operations.
"I have conveyed my strong protest and outrage and demanded a full explanation," Ban told reporters after holding talks with Israeli officials as part of a regional truce tour.
The UN chief, who has for weeks called for a ceasefire in Israel's deadliest offensive ever on
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Gaza, repeated his call, saying the death toll of close on 1,100 people had reached "an unbearable point."
"We have no more time to lose, we must end the civilian suffering now," he said.
Israeli tanks shelled downtown Gaza City yesterday and ground troops thrust deep into a crowded neighbourhood for the first time, sending terrified residents fleeing for cover and increasing pressure on Hamas rulers to accept a proposed ceasefire to end Israel'Sjdevastatingoffensive.
The Israeli military would not discuss its operations and it was not clear whether the intensified assault on Gaza City signalled a new phase in the three-week-old Israeli campaign.
Israel has balked at all-out urban warfare in the narrow alleyways of Gaza’s big cities, where Hamas militants are more familiar with the lay of the land and Israeli casualties would be liable to spiral. But Palestinian witnesses said Israeli tanks fired shellsatleast three high-rise buildings in the downtown area as ground troops advanced into a crowded residential area on the outskirts of the city.
The advance into Gaza City's Tel Hawwa neighbourhood and the shelling of downtown Gaza City came as United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon was due to arrive for meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders. He was coming from Egypt, which has been working with Israel and Hamas to secure at least a temporary halt in fighting.
But Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni insisted the Jewish state would decide how and when to end its massive campaign launched to stem consistent rocket fire from the Palestinian territory.
"We are doing our own assessments on a daily basis and according to them, we will decide when to stop," she said.
In southwestern Gaza, an Israeli strike hit the Al-Quds Hospital in the Tai al-Hawa neighbourhood, where dozens of Israeli tanks rumbled into the streets in the postdawn hours sparking fierce clashes with Palestinian gunmen.
The flames were contained and no injuries were reported in the hospital, where hundreds of frightened civilians had taken shelter to escape the battles raging just a few hun-■ dred metres awn
"I brought the children to the hospital because they were scared at home, but here they are even more terrified," 40-year-old Hossein said as he huddled with his wife and five children in the pediatric ward.
"We can't take this any longer. Look at my children, they're trembling," he said as mothers nearby tried in vain to console their crying children and make them laugh.
An Israeli raid also hit a
building housing several media outlets in central Gaza City, wounding two cameramen.
In all, at least 40 people were killed in Gaza on Thursday, but the exact number of casualties was likely to be much higher as theongoing clashes blocked ambulances from reaching the wounded, medics said.
Since Israel unleashed its Operation Cast Lead on December 27, at least 1,073 people have been killed and at least another 5,000 wounded, according to Gaza medics Among the dead are at least 355 children, 100 women, 117 elderly men and 12 medics, they say.
Israel says 10 Israeli soldiers and three civilians have died as a result of combat or rocket fire in the same period.
Palestinian militants remained defiant, sending .nearly 20 rockets and mortars into Israel, without causing injuries.
Despite the raging violence, Ban said: "I believe that elements are in place for the violence to end now."
Israeli envoy Amos Gilad arrived on Thursday in Egypt, which has been spearheading Western-backed ceasefire efforts.
Gilad was to be briefed by Egypt's pointman for Israeli-Palestinian affairs, intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, the day after Hamas presented its "vision" for a ceasefire, limiting its acceptance to the plan's "broad outlines."
"This crucial meeting should last two or three hours, and Gilad should leave this afternoon to inform the Israeli government for them to take a decision." a diplomatic source close to the negotiations told AFP.
"Israel doesn't seem to want to hurry, another shuttle visit could happen to reach an agreement in the context of the Egyptian initiative," the source said.
Although Egyptian and Spanish diplomats said on Wednesday that Hamas had accepted Egypt's truce plan, a Gaza-based leader of the Islamist group said after talks with officials in Cairo that it did not reject its "broad outlines," without accepting the plan outright.
Israel has made stopping its deadliest offensive on Gaza conditional on a complete halt tn rocket fire from the territory
from Egypt into Gaza.
Amid the diplomatic push on Thursday are emergency sessions of the UN Generail Assembly and Gulf Cooperation Council.
Israel's offensive has sparked widespread concern about a humanitarian crisis in one of the world's most densely populated places where the vast majority of the 1.5 million population depends on foreign aid.