The deliberate and systematic destruction of Lebanon's social infrastructure by the Israeli air force was also a war crime, designed to reduce that country to the status of an Israeli-US protectorate. The attempt has backfired. In Lebanon itself, 87% of the population now support Hizbullah's resistance, including 80% of Christian and Druze and 89% of Sunni Muslims, while 8% believe the US supports Lebanon. But these actions will not be tried by any court set up by the "international community" since the US and its allies that commit or are complicit in these appalling crimes will not permit it.

It has now become clear that the assault on Lebanon to wipe out Hizbullah had been prepared long before. Israel's crimes had been given a green light by the US and its loyal British ally, despite the opposition to Blair in his own country.

In short, the peace that Lebanon enjoyed has come to an end, and a paralysed country is forced to remember a past it had hoped to forget. The state terror inflicted on Lebanon is being repeated in the Gaza ghetto, while the "international community" stands by and watches in silence. Meanwhile, the rest of Palestine is annexed and dismantled with the direct participation of the US and the tacit approval of its allies.

We offer our solidarity and support to the victims of this brutality and to those who mount a resistance against it. For our part, we will use all the means at our disposal to expose the complicity of our governments in these crimes. There will be no peace in the Middle East while the occupations of Palestine and Iraq and the temporarily "paused" bombings of Lebanon continue.

Tariq Ali
Noam Chomsky
Eduardo Galeano
Howard Zinn
Ken Loach
John Berger
Arundhati Roy
London

As our political leaders argue over the difference between a "cessation of hostilities" and a "ceasefire", more and more children die. The British government (unlike the US) has agreed to be bound by the UN convention on the rights of the child. This is a legally enforceable international treaty which enshrines the "right to life" as one of its four core principles. I would be very interested to know how the government justifies its actions in relation to its responsibilities under the convention and why our new children's commissioners have remained silent on what appears to be a flagrant disregard of children's rights, as well as a breach of our international obligations.

Professor Steve Trevillion - University of Leicester

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

Of the incidents B'Tselem investigated in Gaza over the past month, the organization has identified four cases in which Israel may have committed grave breaches of the laws of war. A total of 15 Palestinian civilians were killed in these incidents, including 7 minors, the details of which are as follows:

* Air Force missile hits group of youths, killing six
On 12 July 2006, a group of youths sought shelter from IDF bombing. Ten of the youths went and hid in a big pit. A missile fired from by an Air Force plane hit the pit, killing six of the youths, five of them minors: Mahmmuad al-'Asar, Ibrahim a-Nabahin and Ibrahim Qatush, age 15, Ahmad Abu hajaj, age 16. Salah Abu Maktomah, age 17 and Hassan 'Abeid, age 18.

* IDF fires two shells at residence and kills four members of the family

On 21 July 2006, a few members of the Hararah family went onto the roof of their house in the a-Sheja'iyeh neighborhood in Gaza City to watch tanks advancing toward the neighborhood. One of the tanks fired a shell at the house. It hit the staircase and killed Muhammad Hararah,, 45, the brother of the owner of the house. Almost immediately afterwards, another shell was fired at the same spot, killing the mother of the family, Sabah, 45, and two of her sons, Muamen, 16, and 'Amer, 23.

* Air Force missile hits horse-drawn cart killing a woman and her grandchild

On 24 July 2006, two youngsters left their family's farm in the Beit Lahiya area after shells had fallen on the farm's land. They went by horse-drawn wagon and on the way picked up two of their family. A missile, fired by an Air Force plane, made a direct hit on the wagon, killing Khairieh al-'Attar, 58 and her grandchild Nadi al-'Attar , 11. Another member of the family, Shadi, 14 was injured. Testimony of Shadi al-'Attar

* IDF tank shell lands next to housing project, killing three civilians.

On 24 July 2006, an IDF fired a shell that fell next to the a-Nada Towers , a housing project located in the northern Gaza Strip. The shelling killed three civilians, one of them a minor: Saleh Naser, 14, Sadeq Naser, 33, and S'adi Na'im, 29. Testimony of Muhammad Hararah.

The IDF did not issue a statement regarding any of these cases, nor acknowledge that these civilians had been killed. It is unclear why, in these four cases, the Israeli military fired at unarmed civilians and at residential apartments. According to B'Tselem's investigation, there were no armed Palestinians or weapons stored in any of these locations.

Even if the armed forces did not intend to strike civilians, as senior IDF and government officials state repeatedly, B'Tselem's investigations raise a grave concern that these attacks were launched without taking due caution and without verifying that the targets were not civilian structures, as required by the laws of war.

Furthermore, according to the principle of proportionality, it is forbidden to carry out an attack, even against a military object, with the knowledge that it is liable to cause injury to civilians that is excessive in relation to the military advantage anticipated from the attack. Thus, even if the killing of the 15 civilians in these four incidents resulted from their proximity to armed Palestinians or to weapons, the magnitude of the "collateral" harm to civilians raises the grave concern that the attacks were disproportionate.

B'Tselem has requested the Judge Advocate General to order a Military Police investigation into the circumstances of these cases, and if the suspicions are validated, to prosecute the persons responsible.

The dead and about 15 wounded were being evacuated to hospitals in Syria, they said.

The IAF has been targeting trucks in the area since the onset of the fighting in Lebanon for fear that the Syrians are attempting to smuggle arms designated for Hizbullah use.

Despite Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah's recent threat to attack Tel Aviv if Beirut is bombed, Israeli fighter jets bombed overnight nine Hizbullah targets in the capital's Dahiya district, killing at least three people. The attack came after the IDF dropped leaflets urging residents to evacuate the area.

Bridge destroyed

IDF sources confirmed the attack, saying fighter jets targeted Hizbullah buildings, the home of a senior Hizbullah member and a Hamas office.

Lebanese officials said two people were wounded early Friday when Israeli fighter jets hit a civilian car and a van on the coastal road in the port city of Jounieh in the Christian heartland, 20 kilometers north of Beirut.

A bridge in the Maameltein area near Jounieh was destroyed.

A Lebanese soldier was killed in another strike on an army post south of Beirut, a Lebanese official said.

The air force also targeted a bridge linking Beirut to southern Lebanon and targets in the vicinity of the Beirut International Airport.

One person was killed and another injured in a direct hit on a house in the village of Mughar, while a strike on Kiryat Shmona left one person dead.

Two Israeli Arab villages were also struck, killing a man in each, police officials told the Associated Press news agency.

Earlier on Friday, two Israeli soldiers were killed in clashes in southern Lebanon where there is heavy fighting as Israeli forces try to push Hezbollah back from the border.

Army push

The continuing violence comes as the Israeli army has been told to prepare for a possible advance in what could be its deepest incursion into Lebanon for more than 20 years.

This could see the army push up to the Litani river, 30km (19 miles) north of the border, in pursuit of Hezbollah.

Israel's campaign began three weeks ago after Hezbollah militants captured two Israeli soldiers.

Lebanon says more than 900 people have died since then, most of them civilians. Israel has lost 30 civilians and 40 soldiers.

The raid on the Lebanese village of Qaa, on the northern tip of the Bekaa Valley, hit a vegetable warehouse, Lebanese civil defence officials said.

The dead and injured, many of them Syrian Kurds, were taken to hospitals in Syria.

The Israeli army said it attacked two structures on suspicion that weapons were being transported, and that it was investigating reports that a warehouse had been hit.

The number of dead is the highest in a single strike since Israeli planes hit the southern Lebanese village of Qana, where, according to Human Rights Watch, 28 people were killed and 13 are still missing.

Christian heartlands

Israeli jets have also pounded targets north and south of the Lebanese capital, Beirut.

Local media reported strikes on the Ouzai neighbourhood of southern Beirut, and warship shelling of the suburbs of Haret Hreik and Roweiss.

The Israeli military told Reuters news agency it had targeted Hezbollah offices and the home of a top Hezbollah official, along with a building operated by Palestinian group Hamas.

Israeli air strikes also destroyed four bridges on the main coastal highway in the Christian heartlands north from Beirut.

A UN refugee agency spokeswoman told the BBC the destruction of the bridges was a major setback for the aid operation.

"Now the main road is basically cut off," said Astrid van Genderen Stort. "We are looking at secondary roads, but they are small. That will delay our operations."

The Israeli army said the bridges had been destroyed to prevent Syria from rearming its ally Hezbollah.

Warning

Friday's action came after a threat from Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah to target the Israeli city of Tel Aviv if Israel attacked central Beirut.

Security sources in Israel told a BBC correspondent that "if Tel Aviv was hit by Hezbollah rockets, Israel would target infrastructure in Lebanon".

In his televised speech Sheikh Nasrallah also said that Hezbollah would end its rocket attacks if Israel stopped attacking what he called civilian areas in Lebanon.

Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Dan Gillerman said that suggestion was "a sign of weakness" and that Hezbollah might be "looking for a way out".

In Tel Aviv, civil defence authorities have warned people to be prepared for a possible missile attack, issuing leaflets to the city's 1.5m inhabitants, advising them to prepare bomb shelters or protected rooms.

At the United Nations in New York, negotiations are continuing on the wording of a ceasefire resolution.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has called for a lasting solution to the conflict.

He told the BBC he wanted international leaders to pressure Israel to return detainees, provide maps of landmines and withdraw from "occupied territory".

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said there will be no ceasefire until an international force is deployed in southern Lebanon.

The battle for Lebanon was fast moving out of control last night. Lebanese troops abandoned many of their checkpoints and European diplomats were warning their colleagues that militiamen were taking over the positions. Up to 8,000 Israeli troops were reported to have crossed the border by last night in what was publicised as a military advance towards the Litani river. But far more soldiers would be needed to secure so large an area of southern Lebanon.

The Israelis sent paratroopers to attack an Iranian-financed hospital in Baalbek in the hope of capturing wounded Hizbollah fighters but, after an hour's battle, got their hands on only five men whom the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, later called "tasty fish". The operation suggests what Hizbollah has all along said was the purpose of the Israeli campaign: to swap prisoners and to exchange Hizbollah fighters for the two Israeli soldiers who were captured on the border on 12 July.

Hizbollah continued to fire dozens of missiles over the border into Israel, killing one Israeli and wounding 21, with Israeli artillery firing shells back into Lebanon at the rate of one every two minutes. For the first time, a Hizbollah rocket struck the West Bank as well as the Israeli town of Beit Shean, the longest-range missile to have been fired so far. Yet still the West seems unable to produce an end to a war which is clearly overwhelming both Hizbollah and the Israelis.

Hizbollah obviously has far more missiles than the Israelis believed - there is not a town in northern Israel which is safe from their fire - and the Israeli army apparently has no plan to defeat Hizbollah other than the old and hopeless policy of occupying southern Lebanon. If Hizbollah had planned this campaign months in advance - and if the Israelis did the same - then neither side left room for diplomacy.

The French have wisely said they will lead a peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon only after a ceasefire. And to be sure, they will not let this become a Nato-led army. France already has a company of 100 soldiers in the UN force in southern Lebanon, whose commander is himself French, but Paris, after watching the chaos in Iraq, has no illusions about Western armies in the Middle East.

Outside the shattered Dar al-Hikma hospital in Baalbek yesterday stood two burnt cars and a minivan, riddled with bullet-holes. Hizbollah, it seems, fought the Israelis there for more than an hour. The hospital, which includes several British-manufactured heart machines, was empty when the Israeli raid began and was partly destroyed in the fighting.

The Lebanese army, which has tried to stay out of the conflict - heaven knows what its 75,000 soldiers are supposed to do - was attacked again by the Israelis yesterday when they fired a missile into a car which they claimed was carrying a Hizbollah leader. They were wrong. The soldier inside died instantly, joining the 11 other Lebanese troops proclaimed as "martyrs" by the government from a logistics unit killed in an Israeli air raid two weeks ago.

The obscene score-card for death in this latest war now stands as follows: 508 Lebanese civilians, 46 Hizbollah guerrillas, 26 Lebanese soldiers, 36 Israeli soldiers and 19 Israeli civilians.

In other words, Hizbollah is killing more Israeli soldiers than civilians and the Israelis are killing far more Lebanese civilians than they are guerrillas. The Lebanese Red Cross has found 40 more civilian dead in the south of the country in the past two days, many of them with wounds suggesting they might have survived had medical help been available.

"Israel will seek out and pursue the Hezbollah terrorists and take whatever steps are necessary to rid Israel's north of this murderous terrorist threat,'' said David Baker, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Prospects for a diplomatic solution receded after Olmert said Aug. 1 Israel won't agree to stop fighting until a United Nations peacekeeping force great enough to contain Hezbollah is deployed. He said in an interview with The Times, London, published today that it would have to be about 15,000-strong. A UN meeting planned for today to discuss the force was canceled.

Hezbollah fired 100 rockets into northern Israel as of 5 p.m. Seven civilians were killed, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said, four in Acre and three in Maalot.

In Lebanon, two soldiers were killed and two wounded north of Marwaheen, an Israeli Defense Forces spokesman said, speaking anonymously by regulation. That town is one of several new locations where Israeli forces are operating, said Milos Strugar, a spokesman for the United Nations Interim Force.

Firefight in South

Current exchanges of fire in the area are "heavy,'' Strugar said, and soldiers maintained a presence in the villages of Ayta al-Shaab, Maroun al-Ras, Mais al-Jabal and Kfarkila.

The UN has made little progress toward a cease-fire since U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice left Israel July 31 after failing to broker an agreement. A French resolution calls for an immediate cease-fire. The U.S. has resisted such a halt until a political framework is in place to disarm Hezbollah and bar the group from control of southern Lebanon.

U.S. President George W. Bush discussed the status of negotiations on a UN resolution with U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair late yesterday, said White House spokesman Tony Snow.

"We generally think we're pretty close, but we still have sequencing concerns,'' Snow said, referring to when peacekeepers would go to the region. Negotiations on a resolution may stretch into next week, he said.

Rocket Attacks

The fighting between Israeli ground forces and Hezbollah militiamen near the border came after the group fired 231 rockets into northern Israel yesterday, the biggest single-day volley since the conflict began.

"This combat is not a one-combat deal,'' Yohana Loker, a Brigadier General in the Israeli Air Force told reporters in Tel Aviv late yesterday. "We need to be patient and persistent.'' He said Hezbollah, the Shiite group that triggered the fighting when it seized two soldiers July 12, has an arsenal "from southern Lebanon to Beirut'' that will take time to destroy.

Hezbollah, founded in 1982, is sponsored by Syria and Iran. The group has been linked to scores of terrorist attacks on Israelis and Americans, including rocket assaults on Israeli towns, separate bombings in 1983 in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. servicemen at their barracks and 58 French soldiers at their base in the city, and the 1994 attack that killed 85 people at a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. Israel and the U.S. classify Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

The group has 14 seats in Lebanon's 128-seat parliament. While participating in politics, Hezbollah has defied a UN Security Council resolution that calls for the disarming and disbanding of militias in Lebanon.

Qana Toll

Separately, a Human Rights Watch investigation found that 28 people were confirmed killed in the July 30 Israeli air strike on Qana, Lebanon, while 13 remained missing.

Those figures, based on information from the Lebanese Red Cross and a government hospital in Tyre, contradicted earlier reports that 62 civilians had been killed in the attack. The Human Rights Watch figure still represents the highest single death toll in the conflict.

The Qana attack triggered international criticism of Israel, thwarted Rice's diplomatic mission to the region, and caused Israel to announce a 48-hour suspension of most air attacks.

In a separate operation, aircraft fired missiles early today near Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, killing eight Palestinians, unidentified Palestinian medical officials and witnesses said.

Israel hasn't launched a full-scale military attack on Lebanon or Hezbollah since pulling troops out of an area of southern Lebanon held for 18 years until May 2000.

More than 900 Lebanese have been killed since the fighting began, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said in a video statement. Sixty-five Israelis have been killed, according to the military and police in Israel.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced from their homes by Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel and Israeli air raids in Lebanon. Siniora said 3,000 Lebanese people have been injured.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Janine Zacharia in Jerusalem at jzacharia@bloomberg.net;
Dania Saadi in Beirut on Dsaadi2@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: August 3, 2006 11:03 EDT

Earlier, a Hizbullah-fired rocket killed a 27-year-old woman in Mughar, making this the third time the Druze-Muslim-Christian village was struck by rockets.

She was later identified as Manal Azzam, a mother of two young children.

According to reports, the woman heard the warning siren and entered an inner room in her home, which did not have a shelter, and was killed when the rocket directly struck the house. Two other people were seriously wounded in the town.

Elsewhere, an IDF reservist was seriously wounded by a Katyusha rocket in the Galilee. His family has been notified.

Another person was critically wounded in Kibbutz Sha'ar Yishuv near Kiryat Shmona, while in Safed, two were lightly wounded and two suffered shock. Two more people were lightly wounded by shrapnel and eight suffered from shock in the village of Hurfeish in the upper Galilee.

The Home Front Command ordered residents across the North to remain in shelters or protected areas.

Police commander Dan Ronen said 70 rockets crashed into towns across the north in under an hour. A total of 135 rockets were fired at northern Israel by Friday afternoon.

Police commander Dan Ronen said 70 rockets crashed into towns across the north in under an hour. A total of 135 rockets were fired at northern Israel by Friday afternoon.

Warning sirens sounded all over the North shortly before the barrage, from Safed to Acre and Zichron Ya'akov. Sirens were also heard in the Golan Heights.

Earlier Friday, rockets landed in the Kiryat Shmona area. No one was wounded in that attack.

On Thursday, over 180 rockets were fired at northern Israel, killing eight civilians and wounding many others.

In separate air raids near Beirut's airport and southern suburbs, a Lebanese soldier was killed and two soldiers and four civilians were wounded, security officials and witnesses said. The predominantly Shiite Muslim sector is largely controlled by Hezbollah guerrillas. Israel said Hezbollah facilities and a Hamas office were targeted.

Two Israeli soldiers were killed by a Hezbollah anti-tank missile during heavy fighting in a southern Lebanese village where the militant group had been launching rockets, the army said.

The Israeli attacks on the four bridges on the main north-south coastal highway linking Beirut to Syria severed the only remaining major road link between Lebanon and Syria. The 90-minute drive to the Syrian border takes at least double the time on the small coastal road that remains open.

Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, a staunch pro-Syrian and close ally of Hezbollah, charged that Israel is trying to pressure Lebanon to accept its conditions for a cease-fire , which include Hezbollah's disarmament and ouster from a swath of south Lebanon.

"The Israeli enemy's bombing of bridges and roads is aimed at tightening the blockade on the Lebanese, cutting communications between them and starving them," Lahoud said.

He linked the new raids to Israel's failure to win quick victory in the south, where Israeli soldiers have been mired in ground battles with Hezbollah guerrillas for several days.

An Israeli army spokesman, Capt. Jacob Dallal, said Israel targeted the bridges to stop the flow of weapons from Syria.

International aid agencies said Friday said the road bombing would slow down aid shipments to needy civilians in central Lebanon and the coastline around the capital, Beirut, where the bulk of the population lives.

Border crossings in the east have been shut by airstrikes. Israel has imposed a naval blockade and has hit the international airport to seal off Lebanon's sea and airspace.

"This is Lebanon's umbilical cord," Christiane Berthiaume of the World Food Program told The Associated Press. "This (road) has been the only way for us to bring in aid. We really need to find other ways to bring relief in."

In the farm attack near al-Qaa, a town about six miles from a Hezbollah stronghold, Lebanese civil defense official Ali Yaghi said at least 23 people were killed.

Yaghi said at least 17 workers were wounded and some were likely buried under rubble. A bulldozer was brought to the site to try to uncover survivors, he said.

In Israel, police said 120 rockets had fallen, including one that crashed into a house in the Israeli Arab town of Mughar, killing a woman. An Israeli man was killed near the border town of Kiryat Shemona.

Police commander Dan Ronen said 45 rockets had fallen within one half- hour period.

More than three weeks into the fighting, six Israeli brigades - or roughly 10,000 troops - were locked in battle with hundreds of Hezbollah guerrillas in about 20 towns and villages in south Lebanon.

Israeli artillery intensified bombing there overnight, sending as many as 15 shells per minute against suspected Hezbollah strongholds.

Defense Minister Amir Peretz has told top army officers to begin preparing for a push to the Litani River, about 20 miles north of the border. That would require further approval by Israel's Security Cabinet and could lead to far more casualties.

Hezbollah said in a statement broadcast by the group's Al-Manar TV station that guerrillas had killed six Israeli soldiers near the villages of Aita al-Shaab and Markaba.

The Israeli army said two soldiers were killed and two wounded by a Hezbollah anti-tank missile during heavy fighting in a village where the militant group had been launching rockets.

Despite Israel's efforts, Hezbollah launched at least 200 rockets into northern Israel on Thursday, in a new tactic of simultaneously firing a large number of rockets.

Hezbollah's leader offered to stop attacking if Israel ends its airstrikes.

Israel's United Nations ambassador, Dan Gillerman, said that Sheik Hassan Nasrallah's offer of a truce was "a sign of weakness ... and he may be looking for a way out."

Gillerman warned against a threat by Nasrallah to launch rockets on Israel's commercial center, Tel Aviv.

"We are ready for it, and I am sure that he (Nasrallah), as well as his sponsors, realize the consequences of doing something as unimaginable and crazy as that," the Israeli ambassador told CNN.

On the second front of its offensive against Islamic militants, Israel began pulling tanks out of southern Gaza after a two-day incursion that killed eleven Palestinians, including an 8-year-old boy.

The fighting in Gaza, which began June 25 after Hamas-linked militants captured an Israeli soldier in a cross-border raid, has killed a total of 175 Palestinians, the U.N. reported, adding that it was concerned that "with international attention focusing on Lebanon, the tragedy in Gaza is being forgotten."

The offensive in Lebanon began after another cross-border raid by Hezbollah guerrillas who captured two Israeli soldiers.

According to an Associated Press count, at least 530 Lebanese have been killed, including 454 civilians confirmed dead by the Health Ministry; 26 Lebanese soldiers; and at least 50 Hezbollah guerrillas.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora said that 1 million people - or about a quarter of Lebanon's population - had fled the fighting.

Seventy Israelis have been killed - 41 soldiers and 29 civilians. More than 300,000 Israelis have fled their homes in the north, Israeli officials said.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton said the United States and France have "come a long way" in negotiating a Security Council resolution that calls for an immediate end to Middle East hostilities,said.

In Washington, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed support Thursday for an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon as the first phase in ending the conflict. It was the most concrete signal yet that the U.S. may be willing to compromise on the stalemate over how to end the fighting.

Israel, backed by the United States, has rejected calls for an immediate cease-fire, saying it wants an international force or the Lebanese army to deploy in southern Lebanon to prevent future Hezbollah attacks.

Fighting on two fronts -- against Islamic militants in Gaza and in southern Lebanon -- Israel had one of its fiercest days of fighting since Hamas militants captured a soldier from an Israeli army post near the Gaza frontier more than a month ago.

About 50 tanks, accompanied by bulldozers, moved into an area close to the Gaza-Egypt border before dawn, taking up positions near the long-closed Gaza airport, residents and Palestinian security officials said.

The force advanced about five miles, the farthest into southern Gaza that Israeli troops have gone since the offensive started in late June. The vehicles blocked a main highway and the eastern entrance to Rafah, on the Egyptian border.

As the tanks took up positions, Israeli aircraft fired missiles at groups of Palestinian gunmen, killing four. The attacks also wounded 26 people, at least 10 of them militants, security and hospital officials said.

An Israeli tank later fired a cannon shell at Palestinians gathering in the area after daybreak, killing an 8-year-old boy and wounding three people, including a 4-year-old girl, medical and security officials said. The bodies of three more dead were brought to the hospital, but they were not believed to be militants, medics said.

Rafah Gov. Zuhdi al-Qudra said Israeli soldiers took over roofs of houses near the airport. He said Palestinian medics had been unable to get to areas where casualties were reported from earlier fighting and pleaded for the international community to stop Israel's offensive.

The Israeli army confirmed its troops were in the area around the airport, but said they were not impeding the work of medics.

Gaza residents said shooting subsided by midday but tanks remained in the streets. The tanks were still in position at dusk.

Seventy-five families, comprising 475 people, took shelter at a school run by the United Nations' Works and Relief Agency -- the third time in a month the school has been opened to refugees from the fighting, said Khaled Ashour, UNWRA's area operations assistant.

Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas-linked militants tunneled into Israel from Gaza and attacked an army post June 25, killing two soldiers and capturing a third. Israel has demanded the release of the soldier and an end to the firing of homemade rockets at Israel by Gaza militants.

Israeli ground forces have moved in and out of several parts of the territory regularly since then, confronting armed militants and leaving behind considerable destruction.