BEIRUT (AFP) — UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Saturday condemned as "outrageous" an Israeli strike on a UN-run school in Gaza and called for an immediate ceasefire in the Palestinian enclave, saying the violence there was unprecedented.
"Both sides must stop the fighting now," Ban said in Lebanon, his latest stop in a regional tour to push for a truce in Israel's 22-day-old war on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
"The level of violence in Gaza is unprecedented in recent decades," he told reporters in Beirut, even as Israel's powerful security cabinet was poised to announce a unilateral ceasefire in Gaza, where more than 1,200 Palestinians have been killed since the offensive was launched on December 27.
Ban urged Israel to pull its troops out of Gaza and said the embattled territory's Islamist Hamas rulers must stop firing rockets into Israel.
Israel launched Operation Cast Lead with the declared aim of halting the rocket attacks.
The offensive has killed 1,205 Palestinians, including 41 children, wounded 5,300 and inflicted massive damage to Gaza infrastructure totalling some 476 million dollars, medics and Palestinian officials have said.
At least four UN-run schools have been hit in Israeli strikes, including one on Saturday in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya in which some 1,600 people were sheltering.
Two brothers, five and seven years old, were killed and a dozen people wounded in the attack, including the mother of the boys, Gaza medics and UN officials said.
"I condemn in the strongest terms this outrageous attack," Ban said, adding that this was not the first time a UN-run establishment was hit by Israeli fire since the offensive was launched.
In the deadliest such strike, 43 people were killed when an Israeli tank shell hit a school run by the Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA in the northern Gaza town of Jabaliya on January 6.
Israel at first alleged that Hamas militants had fired at troops from within the building, but eventually backed off the claim that was firmly denied by the United Nations.
"Top Israeli leaders had given me their assurances two days ago when I was visiting Israel that UN premises would be fully respected. I strongly demand a thorough investigation," Ban told the media conference.
He urged Israel's security cabinet to adopt a unilateral ceasefire but stressed that it "should also be accompanied by a time table for Israeli troop withdrawal... (and) have the corresponding response from Hamas militants."
An Israeli defence official has told AFP ground forces will remain in Gaza for several days, even after a unilateral ceasefire has been declared by the Jewish state.
Ban also said he will attend a summit of world leaders on the Gaza crisis in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Sunday, after visiting Syria.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is set to co-chair the summit with his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak, who has sent out invitations to leaders of Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Spain, Turkey and Jordan.
Ban also voiced concern about rocket attacks on Israel from south Lebanon, saying such incidents could escalate the situation and called for restraint on both side of the tense border.
No one has claimed responsibility for the January 8 and January 14 salvo of rockets fired into Israel from southern Lebanon, where UN peacekeepers are deployed.
Ban said that Lebanese leaders are "well aware of the risk that Lebanon might be dragged into a new conflict with Israel" which waged a devastating 34-day war against Lebanon in summer 2006.
More than 1,200 people, most of them civilians, were killed during the conflict, which was brought to an end by an UN resolution. More than 160 Israelis also died, most of them soldiers.
Israel launched the operation after militants from Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah movement seized two Israeli soldiers in a deadly cross-border raid.
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