More Rockets Fired as Toll Rises in Gaza

Palestinian militants in the northern Gaza Strip managed to fire more crude rockets at an Israeli border town Monday, even as Israeli troops and armor inundated a large swath of the seaside territory in a bid to halt such attacks.

The death toll in the wide-ranging 6-day-old Israeli incursion, code-named Days of Reckoning, was nearly 80, with the number of wounded ranging above 200, according to Palestinian hospital officials and an Israeli human rights group. At least one-third of the dead are believed to be noncombatants.

The humanitarian situation was reported to be worsening in the Jabaliya refugee camp, the focal point of the confrontation between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants. The squalid, sprawling site -- a tangle of grit-choked alleyways and concrete-slab slum buildings -- is home to more than 100,000 Palestinians.

With fighting raging all around them, many of those living in the camp are trapped in their homes and running short of food, water and medicine, medical officials said. Israel said it had opened a route for humanitarian supplies, but Jabaliya residents said little or no aid was arriving in the worst-off pockets.

Israeli military officials have described the operation -- the largest of its kind in Gaza in the current 4-year-old conflict -- as open-ended.

“This fighting will continue, and this operation will continue,” said Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, who visited the Israeli desert town of Sderot, where the deaths of two small children in a rocket attack last week triggered the massive strike. “Terror is terror, and we should fight it with an iron fist, and this is what we are doing.”

He and other Israeli officials, though, acknowledged that even the presence of about 200 Israeli armored vehicles and more than 2,000 troops in a 6-mile-deep zone carved out by the army in northern Gaza had been unable to prevent Palestinian militants from firing Kassam rockets, crude projectiles that are essentially flying pipe bombs.

One of two rockets fired from Gaza on Monday hit a college campus on the outskirts of Sderot, slightly injuring a man.

The attacks usually are mounted by two or three Hamas fighters who then disappear into Jabaliya’s labyrinth of narrow streets before Israeli forces can pinpoint the source of fire.

Israel has embarked on aerial surveillance of the Kassam launch zone with drones, helicopters and warplanes. In the camp, makeshift defenses sprang up against the airborne watchers: Rugs and blankets were draped over alleyways, and piles of burning tires sent black smoke billowing into salty air.

Israel says seven rocket crews have been killed or incapacitated during the operation.

Among at least 11 dead in Monday’s clashes was a 14-year-old Palestinian girl killed inside her home. Four men killed in a predawn Israeli artillery strike were identified as fighters, and later a young man was shot dead in the street near his home.

Palestinians also reported a 4-year-old boy killed by a stray bullet in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, but the Israeli army said it knew of no shooting in the area.

Israel, already urged by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to halt the incursion, was braced for more international criticism as the Security Council prepared to vote today on an Algerian-sponsored resolution criticizing the Gaza operation. Annan also urged the Palestinians to halt the rocket attacks.

Israel has brushed aside calls for restraint. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, speaking to Israeli soldiers, said they should consider themselves to be “in the midst of a defensive battle.”

The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem put the death toll during the incursion at 75 as of Monday, including 19 people under the age of 17. It said about 55 homes had been demolished and 50,000 Palestinians in the combat zone lacked electricity and sufficient water.

“We want water. We have only three bottles left,” camp resident Othman Abed-Rabbo told Reuters. “I tried yesterday to send my wife, but a tank fired at her.”

Special correspondent Fayed abu Shammalah in the Jabaliya camp contributed to this report.