Israel seizes high-rises, attacks tunnels in Gaza

Israeli ground forces backed by air and naval power fought their way into urban areas deep inside the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Monday, striking at the Palestinian group’s strongholds but also inflicting a heavy toll in civilian lives.

Medical authorities in Gaza said 20 children were killed by airstrikes, naval shelling and artillery fire that Israel said it was aiming at Hamas’ 15,000-man paramilitary force. Three Israeli soldiers were killed in a “friendly fire” incident.

Palestinians said Israeli attacks intensified before dawn today, hours after troops had entered densely populated areas just north and east of Gaza City. Witnesses said they took up positions atop several six-story buildings on the outskirts of the city, which has a population of 400,000.

In Washington, U.S. officials outlined elements of a proposed truce that met some of Israel’s conditions. But Israeli officials insisted on more time to press the offensive, now in its 11th day, and said it could go on for days if not weeks.

Hamas, too, vowed to keep fighting and fired at least 31 rockets into Israel on Monday, including one that struck an empty kindergarten in the city of Ashdod.

“They want to drag us into urban areas,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak told a parliamentary committee Monday. “The main test could still be ahead.”

A spokesman for Hamas’ military wing, using the nom de guerre Abu Obeida, warned Israel that militants “wait for you in every street and every alleyway.”

The Israeli offensive is aimed at stopping rocket fire by Palestinian militants.

Hamas, an Islamic group whose charter calls for Israel’s destruction, seized control of Gaza after routing the rival Palestinian faction Fatah in mid-2007, two years after Israel unilaterally withdrew its settlements and military bases.

After eight days of air raids, Israel sent tanks and troops into the 140-square-mile territory Saturday.

As Israeli jets and naval ships bombarded the southern part of the strip, striking tunnels used to bring in weapons from Egypt, tank and infantry units punched into the north. They met limited resistance over the weekend as they moved cautiously through open fields before reaching Hamas’ urban strongholds and rocket-launching sites late Monday.

Heavy air and artillery fire erupted after dark near Jabaliya as Israeli forces battled for control of a hill overlooking that city and its sprawling refugee camp.

Another heavy clash was reported in Shajaiyeh, on Gaza City’s eastern outskirts.

The Israeli military said three soldiers were killed and 24 others wounded Monday evening when an errant Israeli tank shell hit a building they had occupied outside Gaza City.

Their deaths brought to four the number of soldiers killed in the ground operation.

Israel said its forces had killed or wounded “dozens” of militants during the operation.

Hamas has released no casualty figures, but Palestinian medical officials said civilians account for about half the 125 deaths recorded since Saturday.

At least 550 Palestinians in Gaza have been reported killed in the last 11 days. About one-fourth of them are civilians, according to estimates by the United Nations.

In addition to the four Israeli deaths in Gaza, an Israeli soldier and three civilians have been killed by cross-border rocket fire. Monday’s dead in Gaza included an unusually high number of children, including three siblings from one family and four from another.

Three adults were killed when a bomb hit a tent set up to receive mourners for a paramedic killed Sunday in an airstrike.

The violence overwhelmed Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s biggest. Wounded were treated in hallways because beds were full.

A senior Israeli military official said the Gaza offensive was going according to plan but was “very complicated because there are a lot of tunnels, a lot of bunkers, a lot of booby traps.”

“Hamas is using a lot of mortars and bombing our forces from a distance,” the official said in a briefing for foreign correspondents. “They’re [also] fighting us at short range . . . in houses, in buildings, in tunnels. They’re exploiting every advantage because they know the place very well.”

He said the army had captured dozens of militants and sent them to interrogation centers in Israel.

Hamas has given few accounts of the fighting. Its leaders are in hiding and make sporadic appearances on Hamas TV. One of them, Mahmoud Zahar, surfaced in a grainy video Monday, exhorting Palestinians to take revenge.

“The Zionists have legitimized the killing of their children by killing our children,” he said.

Maj. Avital Leibovich, an Israeli military spokeswoman, said Hamas was to blame for civilian casualties because it operates in densely populated areas.

“Civilians will probably continue to get killed, unfortunately, because Hamas put them in the first lines of fire,” she said.

Israel sent 80 truckloads of food, medicine and other essentials into Gaza on Monday. But distribution was hampered by shelling that reached deeper into residential areas, set off blazes on the ground and kept people indoors.

“The first thing you are struck by is emptiness in the streets,” said John Ging, director of Gaza operations for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency. “Intermittently you see a family running with their suitcases, obviously looking for some shelter.”

People “are terrorized,” he told reporters at U.N. headquarters via satellite video hookup from Gaza City.

“They feel trapped. . . . There is nowhere for them to go. People who are in homes, they’re not safe. The casualty figures speak to that.”

Gaza’s bloodshed and suffering have spurred street protests against Israel around the world.

Arab delegates met Monday with the U.N. Security Council in New York and urged members to adopt a resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire.

Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, heading a European Union peace mission, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy met separately with Israeli officials in Jerusalem to press the same message.

“The guns must fall silent,” Sarkozy said.

“There must be a humanitarian truce.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni rejected the appeals, saying the military needed more time to subdue Hamas while details of a truce-enforcement mechanism are worked out.

She also rejected any negotiations with Hamas.

“We are not asking the world to take part in the battle; we are only asking to be allowed to carry it out ourselves until we reach a point in which we decide our goals have been met,” Livni said at a joint news conference with Schwarzenberg.

U.S. officials have refrained from demanding an immediate cease-fire. President Bush said Monday that no peace deal would work unless it forces Hamas to stop its attacks.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack outlined a cease-fire plan being promoted by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to address Israel’s security concerns. He said Rice had discussed it by phone over the weekend with 17 foreign leaders in Europe and the Middle East.

The proposal calls for a halt to Hamas’ rocket attacks and an international arrangement to shut down weapons smuggling to Gaza from Egypt. It also addresses Hamas’ main demand -- ending an Israeli blockade of Gaza -- by proposing a reopening of crossing points on the Israeli-Gaza border.

In Damascus, Syria, a senior Hamas official rejected the U.S. proposal, the Associated Press reported. It quoted Moussa Abu Marzouk as saying the plan seeks to impose “a de facto situation” on Gaza by military force.

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boudreaux@latimes.com

Special correspondent Rushdi abu Alouf in Gaza City and Times staff writer Geraldine Baum at the United Nations contributed to this report.