Death Toll Mounts as Israel Expands Gaza Offensive

JERUSALEM — Israel said on Tuesday that four of its soldiers in Gaza were killed by shells from their own tanks — the first known “friendly fire” deaths in the 11-day-old offensive — as Israeli troops were reported to be pushing toward Khan Yunis in southern Gaza and the United Nations said one of its schools in the beleaguered territory was hit by Israeli fire.

Gaza residents took refuge in a United Nations school as Israel’s offensive continued with artillery, helicopter and tank fire.

Casualties were reported mounting on both sides as the military confrontation broadened. News reports said Israeli forces were probing deeper into southern Gaza after concentrating their initial thrust in the north of the coastal strip.

Defying Israeli and international demands, Hamas militants in Gaza fired more rockets into Israel Tuesday, one of them falling in the town of Gadera, less than 20 miles south of Tel Aviv, the Israeli Army said.

The target was the furthest north that any of the hundreds of missiles fired from Gaza has yet struck since the Israeli offensive began.

The location was significant to many Israelis since Gadera, about 25 miles north of Gaza, is perceived as being linked to Tel Aviv, meaning that central Israel may now be a vulnerable target for Hamas rockets along with the southern cities that have borne the brunt of the missile fire. Shrapnel from the attack slightly injured a three-month-old baby, the army said.

Since launching its ground offensive into Gaza on Saturday, Israel has killed 130 Hamas fighters, Israeli officials say. Hamas has killed five Israelis by rocket fire and in military encounters since the conflict began.

The Israeli army said on Tuesday that three Israeli soldiers were killed in tank-fire directed at a building they had occupied in northern Gaza, and a fourth soldier was killed in a separate incident, apparently also caused by a shell from a tank.

Since the operation began, Israeli officials in Washington said, the number of rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza has fallen to about 20 a day from a peak of 80 on Christmas Day. “The situation has obliged them to contract and pull back the rockets,” said Jeremy Issacharoff, the Israeli deputy chief of mission in Washington. “The rate of attrition is important,” he said, noting that Hamas was now launching fewer rockets than Israeli forces had expected.

In the latest phase of the fighting, Israel Radio quoted witnesses as saying Israeli forces were pushing toward Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, but details of the fighting there were sparse.

In the north of Gaza, three Palestinian men were killed late Monday night when a United Nations Relief and Works Agency school compound was hit by Israeli fire, according to a statement released on Tuesday by the organization, which provides assistance to registered Palestinian refugees. More than 400 Palestinians from northern Gaza were taking refuge in the school in Gaza City at the time, and the building was clearly marked as a United Nations installation, the statement said.

The latest fighting coincided with a new and inconclusive diplomatic effort to bring pressure on Hamas to halt the rocket attacks — one of Israel’s pre-conditions for a ceasefire, along with the destruction of Hamas as a fighting force and measures to prevent the Islamic militants from re-arming.

In Damascus President Nicolas Sarkozy of France met with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria after holding earlier talks in Egypt and discussions with Israeli leaders and Palestinian officials in the West Bank. Hamas is headquartered in Syria, and Mr. Assad is key ally of both Hamas and the Islamist Hezbollah movement in Lebanon. There was no immediate indication that the French leader had secured a commitment from Mr. Assad to put pressure on Hamas.

After talks with Mr. Sarkozy, Mr. Assad told a news conference that Israeli leaders “have not learned the lessons of the war in Lebanon” in 2006 when Hezbollah emerged politically strengthened from a bruising battle with Israel.

“Israel is falling into the same trap again and the Israelis will pay the highest price,” Mr. Assad said, calling the Israeli offensive a “war crime.”

Mr. Sarkozy said the violence “must stop immediately, as soon as possible.” He described the fighting in Gaza as “unbearable.”

Both sides in the Gaza conflict have adopted uncompromising positions.

On Monday, the Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, said after a meeting with officials from the Czech Republic, Sweden and France that Israel would “change the equation” in the region. She added that in other conflicts, “countries send in forces in order to battle terrorism, but we are not asking the world to take part in the battle and send their forces in — we are only asking them to allow us to carry it out until we reach a point in which we decide our goals have been reached for this point.” Israeli officials have said repeatedly that they are not ready to accept any cease-fire proposal that did not guarantee a permanent stop to rocket attacks as well as smuggling of weapons through tunnels under Gaza’s border with Egypt.

The Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar, speaking from a hiding place in a recorded speech on Hamas television, said: “The Israeli enemy in its aggression has written its next chapter in the world, which will have no place for them. They shelled everyone in Gaza. They shelled children and hospitals and mosques, and in doing so, they gave us legitimacy to strike them in the same way.”

Palestinian medical officials estimated that the death toll during the war exceeded 560 on Tuesday. The United Nations estimated that about a quarter of those killed were civilians.

Israel said it had hit some civilian targets because they housed rockets, launchers or militants. It offered limited evidence of its claim.

Toward night on Monday, northern Gaza was the site of heavy fighting, including artillery, helicopter and tank fire, witnesses said. Plumes of smoke were visible in the night sky.

Inside Gaza City, windows are blown out, electricity is cut and drinking water scarce. While phones rang with the recorded threats against Hamas, leaflets dropped from airplanes littered the streets, saying: “Hamas is getting a taste of the power of the Israeli military after more than a week and we have other methods that are still harsher to deal with Hamas. They will prove very painful. For your safety, please evacuate your neighborhood.”

Israeli officials hope an eventual deal will be struck without engaging directly with Hamas, but Mark Regev, the spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said Israel would not exclude a tacit understanding with Hamas.

“The endgame for us is threefold: that Hamas’s military machine would be substantially destroyed; two, Hamas understands that shooting rockets means paying a price they don’t want to pay; and three, there are mechanisms in place to prevent Hamas from rearming,” Mr. Regev said.

But as the offensive unfolds, so, too, evidence is mounting of a severe humanitarian crisis.

Maxwell Gaylard, United Nations humanitarian affairs coordinator, said at a Jerusalem news briefing on Monday that because of the attacks, people could not reach available food.

Children are hungry, cold, without electricity and running water, he said, “and above all, they’re terrified. That by any measure is a humanitarian crisis.”

Tags: Gaza, Israel, Jerusalem, World