Associated Press . Gaza City
Israeli forces shelled the United Nations headquarters in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, setting fire to the compound filled with hundreds of refugees as UN chief Ban Ki-moon was in the region on a mission to end Israel’s devastating offensive against the territory’s Hamas rulers.
Ban expressed ‘outrage’ over the bombing. He said Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak told him there had been a ‘grave mistake’ and promised to pay extra attention to protecting UN installations. The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the bombing, which a UN official said injured at least three people.
Even as a top Israeli envoy went to Egypt to discuss a ceasefire proposal, the military pushed farther into Gaza in an apparent effort to step up pressure on Hamas. Ground forces thrust deep into a crowded neighbourhood for the first time, sending terrified residents fleeing for cover.
Shells also struck a hospital, five high-rise apartment buildings and a building housing media outlets in Gaza City, injuring several journalists.
Bullets entered another building housing The Associated Press offices, entering a room where two staffers were working but wounding no one. The Foreign Press Association, representing journalists covering Israel and the Palestinian territories, demanded a halt to attacks on press buildings.
The army has collected the locations of media organisations to avoid such attacks.
Israel launched its war on December 27 in an effort to stop militant rocket fire from Gaza that has terrorised hundreds of thousands of Israelis. Some 1,100 Palestinians have been killed, roughly half of them civilians, according to UN and Palestinian medical officials. Thirteen Israelis also have died.
Israel says it will press ahead with the campaign until it receives guarantees of a complete halt to rocket fire and an end to weapons smuggling into Gaza from neighbouring Egypt.
Israeli envoy Amos Gilad travelled to Cairo to discuss truce prospects with Egypt, which has been serving as the key mediator. Israel also sent a senior diplomat to Washington to discuss international guarantees that Hamas will not rearm.
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said there was ‘momentum’ in negotiations and Israel was hopeful that a deal on its terms was ‘close and attainable.’
Barak, visiting soldiers on a southern base, said the fighting would continue but Israel’s eyes were ‘also open to the possibility of winding up this operation and consummating Israel’s exceptional results and accomplishments through diplomacy.’
Ban, who arrived in Tel Aviv on Thursday morning from Egypt, said he was ‘outraged’ by the attack on the UN headquarters.
‘I conveyed my strong protest and outrage to the defence minister and foreign minister and demanded a full explanation,’ Ban said. He said Barak told him there had been a ‘grave mistake’ and promised to pay extra attention to protecting UN installations.
The UN compound in Gaza had only that morning become a makeshift shelter for hundreds of Gaza City residents seeking sanctuary from relentless Israeli shelling, said a UN official in Gaza. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorised to speak to the media.
But shortly after, a shell hit the school, wounding three people, the official said. Two other shells hit a warehouse housing humanitarian supplies and a UN parking lot, he said.
The UN compound houses the UN Works and Relief Agency, which distributes food aid to hundreds of thousands of destitute Gazans in the tiny seaside territory of 1.4 million people.
UN spokesmen confirmed that at least three people were wounded but said the fire and smoke engulfing the compound made it impossible to know if it had been completely evacuated.
UN spokesman Adnan Abu Hasna said the UN had given Israel the coordinates of the building and the compound was also clearly marked with UN flags and logos. Large stocks of food and fuel used to supply hospital and water pumps were at risk of destruction, as were valuable UN archives dating back to 1948, Abu Hasna said.
Hours earlier, thousands of residents had fled their homes with the advance of Israeli ground troops into Gaza City’s Tel Hawwa neighbourhood. Many were clad only in their pajamas, and some were wheeling elderly parents in wheelchairs, one of them with an oxygen tank. Others stopped journalists’ armoured cars and ambulances pleading for someone to take them to a UN compound or to relatives’ homes.
Rasha Hassam, a 25-year-old engineer, ran out of her apartment building carrying her screaming, crying, 6-year-old daughter, Dunia.
‘God help us, God help us, where can we flee?’ she cried. ‘All I want is to get my poor child away from here. We want to survive.’
Thousands of others were trapped in Tel Hawwa’s high-rise buildings by the fire, too afraid to even attempt to flee.
Three shells hit the Al Quds hospital in the neighbourhood, setting its pharmacy building ablaze, trapping about 400 patients and staff inside the main hospital building, said Khaled Abu Zeid, a medic inside the building reached on his mobile phone.
In the nearby downtown area, Israeli tanks fired shells at five high-rise buildings, Palestinian witnesses said.
Courtesy: newagebd.com
