GAZA CITY (AFP) — Israel carried out new deadly air raids on the Gaza Strip on Friday as the UN Security Council called for an immediate ceasefire to end the two-week-old conflict in the Palestinian enclave.
As the death toll from Operation Cast Lead neared 800, the 15-member Security Council gave its near unanimous approval to a resolution calling for an "immediate, durable" ceasefire leading to the "full withdrawal" of Israeli forces from Gaza.
The text also calls for "the unimpeded provision and distribution throughout Gaza of humanitarian assistance, including of food, fuel and medical treatment."
The United States, Israel's main ally, abstained but refrained from vetoing a resolution agreed upon after lengthy negotiations between Arab and Western foreign ministers.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States had held back from voting for the resolution as it wanted to see the outcome of a peace initiative by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak who has invited Israel and the Palestinians to Cairo for talks on truce conditions.
The UN vote will ratchet up the pressure on Israel to end an offensive that has so far claimed the lives of 778 Palestinians, according to medics in Gaza, making it the deadliest ever offensive by Israel on the tiny coastal strip.
Israel's security cabinet was meeting on Friday morning to discuss its response to the resolution. "Israel is acting and will act only according to its interests and the security of its citizens and its right to self-defence," a senior official quoted Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni as saying.
Even as the council debated the resolution, the sound of Israeli air raids and fresh explosions could be heard in Gaza City and other areas of the strip.
The air force attacked more than 50 targets overnight, including rocket launching sites, weapons production and storage sites, Hamas buildings and outposts as well as gunmen, the military said.
Palestinian medics said at least 12 people were killed in overnight air strikes. Around 20 people were also killed in Israeli strikes on Thursday, including a Ukrainian and a Moroccan woman, both married to Palestinians, they said.
Eleven Israeli soldiers and three civilians have been killed since the start of the offensive on December 27.
Since midnight (2200 GMT Thursday,) four missiles fired by Palestinian militants hit the Beersheva area, some 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Gaza, with no damage or injuries reported, a military spokesman said.
Israel's ambassador to the UN, Gabriela Shalev, reiterated the operation launched on December 27 was a response to years of rocket attacks.
"Responsibility for the current hostilities lies squarely with Hamas," she told the council. "The international community must focus its attention on the cessation of Hamas's terrorist activity and make clear that a terrorist organisation can never be a legitimate leadership."
However there has been mounting criticism over the deaths of civilians in the offensive with around 50 people killed in Israeli attacks on three schools run by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) earlier in the week.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it was temporarily restricting its Gaza operations to the territory's main city after one of its vehicles was hit, apparently by Israeli forces.
"We had an incident when one of our trucks travelling at the front of a convoy of 13 ambulances delivering medical assistance to south Gaza was shot at," ICRC spokeswoman Anne Sophie Bonefeld told AFP. She said one person was lightly wounded.
Asked who attacked the truck, she said: "We very much believe it was the IDF (Israeli military)."
She said the ICRC was temporarily limiting its operations to Gaza City "while we reassess security arrangements."
The main UN agency in Gaza, UNRWA on Thursday suspended it operations in the battered Palestinian enclave after a contracted driver was killed when a truck convoy, sent to pick up humanitarian supplies in northern Gaza, was hit by tank shells.
Hamas criticised the decision by the agency, which distributes food to about half of Gaza's 1.5 million people as well as running schools and other centres.
"UNRWA's decision to suspend its activities is not logical and is inexcusable. Its duty is to protect victims of war, not to abandon them," spokesman Fawzi Barhum said in a statement.
The ICRC accused Israel of failing to help the wounded after rescuers found four small children clinging to their dead mothers.
Israel has said it was investigating the convoy death and the ICRC claims but has repeatedly insisted Hamas is to blame for civilian deaths because the Islamist fighters operate from densely populated areas.
On Friday the United Nations cited witnesses saying Israeli forces evacuated about 110 Palestinians into a house which they then repeatedly shelled 24 hours later, killing about 30 people.
It said that "according to several testimonies, on 4 January Israeli foot soldiers evacuated approximately 110 Palestinians into a single-residence house in Zeitun (half of whom were children) warning them to stay indoors. Twenty-four hours later, Israeli forces shelled the home repeatedly, killing approximately 30."
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) called it "one of the gravest incidents since the beginning of operations" by Israeli forces in Gaza on December 27.
"Those who survived and were able walked two kilometres to Salah Ed Din road before being transported to hospital in civilian vehicles. Three children, the youngest of whom was five months old, died upon arrival at the hospital," OCHA said in a report on the situation in the battered Gaza Strip.
Asked for comment an Israeli military spokesman said the allegation was being investigated as were other claims that civilians were fired upon and that troops failed to help wounded civilians.
The report came as the UN Human Rights Council was due to hold Friday a special session on the conflict in Gaza Strip to examine a motion by Egypt, Pakistan and Cuba seeking condemnation of the Israeli offensive and of "grave" violations.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
