Israeli shelling killed more than 40 Palestinians on Tuesday at a U.N. school where civilians had taken shelter, medical officials said, in carnage likely to boost international pressure on Israel to halt a Gaza offensive.

The Israeli army accused Hamas of using civilians as “human shields” and said its troops had fired mortars at the premises after gunmen mortared their positions from inside al-Fakhora school in Jabalya refugee camp.

Citing intelligence reports, it named two men it said were Islamist gunmen killed in the attack. A spokesman said the army did not know how many others died.

People cut down by shrapnel lay in pools of blood in the street. Witnesses said two shells exploded outside the school, killing at least 42 civilians and wounding dozens among people who had taken refuge there and residents of nearby buildings.

Within hours, Egypt, backed by France and other European powers, proposed an immediate ceasefire and talks that could address Israel’s demands that Hamas be starved of rockets and other weapons smuggled over the Egyptian border.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and French President Nicolas Sarkozy made the move at a joint news conference. There was no immediate response from Israel or from Hamas.

As bitter combat on the ground went into a fourth day after a week-long aerial bombardment, the bloodshed took Palestinian deaths in 11 days of violence to over 600.

They also prompted U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to break his silence on the offensive, to say the loss of life among civilians was “a source of deep concern” for him.

As momentum gathered behind a European truce plan that could starve Hamas of arms, the outgoing Bush administration said it wanted an “immediate ceasefire.”

But it stressed conditions that have characterized the distance between the United States, Israel’s close ally, and European and Arab demands for an instant halt to the offensive.

Obama, who takes over from George W. Bush on January 20, said he would not engage in policy until he was in office but vowed to work rapidly thereafter to secure peace in the Middle East.

Some commentators have said the U.S. presidential transition has exposed the United States to greater risks from Israel’s action in Gaza. Al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri called on the Internet for Muslims to “hit the interests of the Zionists and Crusaders wherever and in whichever way you can.”

Washington’s allies in Arab governments have condemned the Israeli assault, which has contributed to rising oil prices, and the always vocally anti-American Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, another OPEC member, called it a “Holocaust.”

COMBAT

A fourth day of a ground assault, launched after a week of air strikes, still failed to end Hamas rocket salvoes, which again caused damage and some injury in southern Israel.

Families huddled for shelter in homes and schools, where classes have been halted, and explosions and gunfire crashed and rattled along the 40-km strip of Mediterranean coast all day.

A senior U.N. official in Gaza said 350 people had been sheltering at the Fakhora school and the United Nations regularly gave the Israeli army exact geographical coordinates of its facilities to try to keep them safe from attack.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said: “Unfortunately, (Hamas fighters) are hiding amongst civilians.” She added that Israel was trying to avoid civilian casualties.

The army’s chief spokesman said: “Hamas and its senior commanders are turning their citizens into bulletproof vests for their personal use.” His office released video which it said showed gunmen firing from another U.N. school in Gaza in 2007.

The deaths in Gaza, home to 1.5 million, raised to 77 the number of Palestinian civilians killed on Tuesday, medics said.

The spike in civilian casualties could prove to be a turning point in Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead,” launched on December 27 with the declared aim of removing the Hamas rocket threat.

The killing of 28 unarmed Lebanese in Israeli bombing in the village of Qana in the 2006 Lebanon war drained foreign support for its campaign against Hezbollah guerrillas.

PEACE EFFORTS

International efforts already under way to end the fighting have focused on securing a deal that would meet Israel’s demand that Hamas, an Islamist group elected in 2006 and now in sole charge of the Gaza Strip, could not rearm once hostilities end.

“If there is an end to terror, an end to the smuggling of ammunition from Sinai to Gaza, the Israeli fighting will stop,” Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said, referring to arms Hamas obtains through tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border.

In fighting on Tuesday, Israeli forces pushed into the southern town of Khan Younis and battled Hamas militants on the outskirts of the city of Gaza.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip, at least 631 Palestinians have been killed and more than 2,700 wounded since Israel began its offensive.

Ten Israelis, including three civilians hit by rocket fire, have been killed in the conflict. At least five rockets landed in Israel on Tuesday, including one that hit the town of Gadera, 28 km (17 miles) from Tel Aviv. A three-month-old baby was hurt.

In Gaza, an infant of similar age was among children killed.

A senior Israeli official, speaking before Sarkozy and Mubarak’s statements, were pursuing “a serious initiative” for a ceasefire. Talks were focusing, the official said, on the size of an “international presence” along the Gaza-Egypt border.

Tony Blair, the Middle East envoy of major powers sponsoring Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, said Sarkozy, the European Union and the United States were all in agreement that new anti-smuggling measures would be needed to clinch a ceasefire.

Hamas, which has rebuffed Western demands to recognize Israel, end violence and accept existing interim peace deals, has demanded a lifting of the blockade of the Gaza Strip in any future ceasefire. It seized the territory in 2007, 18 months after it won a Palestinian parliamentary election.

Most of the deaths reported by Gaza hospitals in recent days have been civilians. The Israeli military said it killed 130 militants since it began the ground assault, a figure that suggested the total Palestinian death toll might be close to 750 and that bodies could still be on the battlefield.

Many of the Gaza Strip’s 1.5 million people lack food, water or power. In southern Israel, schools remained closed and hundreds of thousands of people have been rushing to shelter at the sound of alarms heralding incoming rockets.

article source http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE5053R720090106?sp=true

Foreign ministers from U.N. Security Council members and Arab states piled pressure on Israel on Tuesday to end its 11-day attack on the Gaza Strip as the number of civilian deaths there continued to mount.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, presiding over a special Security Council meeting on the Gaza crisis, called for an immediate ceasefire that would also ensure an end to Palestinian rocket attacks against southern Israel and the smuggling of weapons into Gaza for Hamas militants. “International monitoring mechanisms might prove necessary and we are willing to contribute to this,” Kouchner said. He said France was awaiting Israel’s response to a ceasefire proposal announced by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak after a meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and “we harbor hope that it will be a positive one.” The Mubarak announcement received explicit backing from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Israeli U.N. Ambassador Gabriela Shalev made no reference to the proposal in her speech to the council. Abbas’ Fatah movement was ousted from Gaza in 2007 when Hamas, which does not recognize Israel’s right to exist, seized control of the enclave. Gaza has some 1.5 million Palestinians, most of whom are dependent on some form of humanitarian aid. Rice said it was crucial for Abbas’ Palestinian Authority to re-establish its control over Gaza. “Our goal must be the stabilization and normalization of life in Gaza,” Rice said, adding that any ceasefire plan “has to be a solution that does not allow the rearmament of Hamas.” ‘MACHINE OF DESTRUCTION’ Abbas criticized Israel for ignoring calls from around the globe for an end to its military campaign in Gaza — and for the large number of civilian deaths it has caused. “The Israeli machine of destruction continues to kill, to commit the most heinous of possible crimes despite international unanimity, an unprecedented unanimity in calling for an end of this massacre against innocent civilians that do not deserve such brutality,” Abbas said. Other top diplomats attending the council meeting were British Foreign Secretary David Miliband and senior Arab officials like Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal. Earlier on Tuesday, Israeli fire killed at least 40 Palestinians at a U.N. school in Gaza where civilians had taken shelter. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the attacks on the schools were “totally unacceptable and should not be repeated.” He said he would travel to Israel and the Palestinian territories next week to support efforts to end the crisis. More than 600 Palestinians have been killed and at least 2,700 wounded since Israel began the campaign last month with the declared aim of ending rocket attacks by Hamas Islamist militants on its southern towns. Nine Israelis, including three civilians hit by rocket fire, have been killed. Abbas reiterated Palestinian calls for the council to quickly adopt a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. But Western council members said a text may not be ready for a vote until next week. Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan also said his country, a newly elected member of the Security Council that has been active in trying to end the violence in Gaza, would be prepared to contribute to an international monitoring force in Gaza.

Israeli leaders will debate on Wednesday whether to order their armed forces to storm into the Gaza Strip’s urban centres, the planned culmination of a nearly two-week-old offensive, political sources said.

Escalating from a week-long air assault, Israeli troops and tanks invaded the Hamas-ruled territory on Saturday, clashing with Palestinian guerrillas but not advancing beyond the outskirts of the city of Gaza or other densely populated areas. Israel called the initial ground sweep the “second stage” of the operation, without saying what could follow. The opacity helped spur a frenzy of international mediation to secure a truce under which Hamas would stop cross-border rocket fire. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s security cabinet, due to convene on Wednesday, would discuss the third — and final — stage of the offensive, two senior political sources said, though the ministers may defer a vote on approving the plan. “The plan is to enter the urban centres,” said one source, declining to be named. Postponing a final decision on the plan could allow Israel to keep its forces in readiness while maintaining leeway for any breakthrough in possible truce talks led by Egypt. Olmert’s spokesman Mark Regev declined to comment on Wednesday’s meeting, saying: “We do not generally discuss the agendas of the security cabinet.” CHALLENGE Military analysts believe Israeli forces would be severely challenged by combat in Gaza’s congested casbahs and alleyways, where much of their air support would be irrelevant and where Palestinian gunmen would be able to mount hit-and-run ambushes. Conquering Gaza could amount to a reoccupation of a territory the Jewish state captured from Egypt in a 1967 war and quit in 2005. Israeli leaders have said they do not want to reoccupy Gaza or, for now, to topple the Islamist Hamas group. Seven Israeli soldiers have died in an offensive that has killed more than 640 Palestinians, at least a quarter of them civilians, medics said. Palestinian rockets, the stated reason for Israel’s assault, have killed four Israeli civilians. Israel said its troops had killed 130 guerrillas since Saturday, a figure that suggested the total Palestinian death toll since Dec. 27 might be close to 770 and that bodies could still be on the battlefield. According to one Israeli source with knowledge of the security cabinet’s discussions, the initial ground sweep was executed well but the military top brass was disappointed by what they saw as relatively little Palestinian resistance. “The assumption was that our forces could draw out the enemy into open areas where they could be eliminated, but they didn’t come out in the number we expected,” the source said. “Taking the fight into the populated areas would be much tougher.” Hamas spokesman Abu Ubaida said in a speech on Monday: “We have prepared for you, Zionists, thousands of tough fighters who are waiting for you in every street, every alley and at every house, and they will meet you with iron and fire.”