Gaza City

JERUSALEM - Israeli troops stepped up attacks on Hamas fighters in the outskirts of Gaza City yesterday, as the death toll of Palestinians in recent fighting surpassed 900 and Hamas militants fired a new volley of rockets into southern Israel. On the 17th day since Israel launched its incursion into the Gaza Strip, the conflict appeared to be reaching a crucial threshold that could result in escalated combat or a negotiated resolution. In a televised statement from a hide-out presumed to be in Gaza, a top leader of the battered Hamas regime mixed defiance with language suggesting openness to diplomacy.

Commentary writer Laila El-Haddad feels "betrayed" by Judge Richard Goldstone's repudiation of the central allegation of the U.N.'s Goldstone commission investigation. Turns out the Israelis, as they said all along, did not intentionally target Palestinian civilians during the anti-terrorist Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip in December 2008 and January 2009. El-Haddad quotes her father, from Gaza City, saying Israeli forces "destroyed everything living and beautiful and ordinary," and cites the displacement of "more than 50,000 people" to prove it. The population of the Gaza Strip is about 1.4 million.

JERUSALEM -- Islamic militants accidentally blew up their workshop while making bombs in Gaza City yesterday, killing at least six people and wounding more than 30 others, Palestinian police said.Brig. Gen. Ghazi Jabali, chief of the Gaza City police, said that members of a military unit of the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, were working in an elaborate "bomb factory" on the second floor of a three-story apartment building when they detonated explosives they were making.The blast destroyed the building, raining debris across a mile-wide area in the densely populated Sheik Radwan neighborhood and throwing the badly torn bodies of some victims 300 yards away.

JERUSALEM - Israeli leaders worked at home and abroad yesterday to reinforce a fragile cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and respond to international criticism of civilian casualties inflicted by Israel's 22-day offensive against Hamas militants who control the Palestinian enclave. Israel's foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, met in Brussels, Belgium, with European leaders about preventing arms smuggling into Gaza, and military officials in Tel Aviv said they were investigating complaints that Israeli forces ignored international restrictions on the use of phosphorus weapons during their attacks in Gaza.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Israeli troops in tanks and armored vehicles rumbled into a neighborhood of Gaza City yesterday, killing eight Palestinians in fierce gunbattles that cast a pall over efforts by an American envoy to revive the flagging Middle East peace effort. Early today an explosion went off on a bus in Jerusalem, near Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's official residence, and police said five people were killed and dozens were wounded. The blast went off on Gaza Street in downtown Jerusalem, about 100 yards from Sharon's residence.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - It was barely 12 hours after the deaths and an angry mob was pressing against the locked door of the morgue. Finally, yesterday morning, the bodies were carried out. Sobbing relatives bore them aloft through Gaza's teeming streets. At least 12 Palestinians had been killed late Saturday and early yesterday during street-to-street combat with Israeli soldiers backed by tanks and helicopter gunships that moved into the city from three directions. The Israeli army described it as its largest offensive into the Gaza Strip since the Palestinian uprising erupted 28 months ago. Army commanders said that most if not all of the people killed and wounded in its attack were Palestinian gunmen who mounted fierce resistance.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Shells fired by Israeli forces hit a United Nations school yesterday, killing at least 30 Palestinians who had sought shelter there on a day when Israeli forces pushed deeper into the Gaza Strip and a Hamas rocket struck a town about 20 miles south of Tel Aviv. Street battles rumbled across the Palestinian enclave and bloodshed showed no signs of ebbing, despite renewed calls by Arab and European leaders for the U.N. Security Council to demand a cease-fire. International pressure on Israel intensified after Palestinian medical officials reported that 75 Gazans were killed yesterday as Israeli forces swept into more densely populated areas.

JERUSALEM - The military power of Hamas has been weakened and its political leadership is divided over plans for a possible cease-fire, but an Israeli intelligence official said yesterday that the radical group remains dangerous, with 15,000 fighters, tunnels and a sophisticated arsenal of rockets and anti-tank weapons. The senior official's assessment was delivered in a news briefing on a day when Israeli ground forces and Hamas guerrillas battled fiercely in a southeastern neighborhood of high-rise apartments in Gaza City.

JERUSALEM - Thousands of Israeli soldiers supported by helicopter gunships and columns of tanks bisected the Gaza Strip yesterday, isolating its largest city amid fierce clashes on multiple fronts with militant fighters. At least 35 Palestinians died in confrontations with Israeli troops and from missile strikes and artillery barrages, according to local medical sources. More than 500 Palestinians have been killed since Dec. 27, when Israel began its current campaign against Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza.

JERUSALEM - Israeli troops and tanks thrust into the Gaza Strip's densely populated capital from three directions yesterday, drawing Hamas fighters into fierce combat in an offensive expanded by a fresh deployment of army reservists. High-rise apartments shook, and smaller, targeted buildings crumbled in Gaza City under the force of Israeli artillery shelling and missiles fired from helicopters. Plumes of black smoke rose as Hamas fighters answered with mortars, automatic rifles and grenades.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - As residents of the Gaza Strip continued to sift through the rubble and mourn their dead, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon toured the seaside Palestinian enclave yesterday and declared himself "deeply grieved by what I have seen today." Ban entered Gaza from Israel in a convoy of armored vehicles. Speaking to reporters in front of the smoldering remains of a U.N. food warehouse set ablaze last week by an Israeli tank shell, a somber Ban said he had witnessed "heartbreaking" scenes of destruction.

On a day of action on military and diplomatic fronts, Israeli soldiers drove deep into Gaza City yesterday, killed two top Hamas leaders and incurred withering international criticism for shelling a United Nations compound full of provisions for refugees. Despite the assault, Hamas fighters managed to fire at least 26 rockets and mortar shells at southern Israel. A rocket seriously wounded a woman and a 7-year-old boy in Beersheva, about 26 miles from Gaza, and injured three others. But there were also signs that a cease-fire deal was within reach.

JERUSALEM - The military power of Hamas has been weakened and its political leadership is divided over plans for a possible cease-fire, but an Israeli intelligence official said yesterday that the radical group remains dangerous, with 15,000 fighters, tunnels and a sophisticated arsenal of rockets and anti-tank weapons. The senior official's assessment was delivered in a news briefing on a day when Israeli ground forces and Hamas guerrillas battled fiercely in a southeastern neighborhood of high-rise apartments in Gaza City.

JERUSALEM - Israeli troops stepped up attacks on Hamas fighters in the outskirts of Gaza City yesterday, as the death toll of Palestinians in recent fighting surpassed 900 and Hamas militants fired a new volley of rockets into southern Israel. On the 17th day since Israel launched its incursion into the Gaza Strip, the conflict appeared to be reaching a crucial threshold that could result in escalated combat or a negotiated resolution. In a televised statement from a hide-out presumed to be in Gaza, a top leader of the battered Hamas regime mixed defiance with language suggesting openness to diplomacy.

JERUSALEM - Israeli troops and tanks thrust into the Gaza Strip's densely populated capital from three directions yesterday, drawing Hamas fighters into fierce combat in an offensive expanded by a fresh deployment of army reservists. High-rise apartments shook, and smaller, targeted buildings crumbled in Gaza City under the force of Israeli artillery shelling and missiles fired from helicopters. Plumes of black smoke rose as Hamas fighters answered with mortars, automatic rifles and grenades.

Israeli aircraft pounded Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip yesterday and scattered leaflets warning of an escalation in attacks, but there was no sign that its forces had begun a major advance on the militant group's urban strongholds. A senior Hamas commander and seven members of a Palestinian family were among those killed on the 15th day of Israel's thundering assault, which also damaged a hospital. Palestinian militants fired 15 rockets into Israel, wounding three people. Diplomatic efforts to end the fighting sputtered as Egypt rebuffed a proposal to place international forces along its border to help prevent weapons-smuggling into Gaza.

Jerusalem -- More than 30 Palestinian policemen charged onto the grounds of the Palestinian parliament in Gaza City yesterday and fired weapons into the air, demanding more government support in a growing confrontation with the militant Islamic faction Hamas. Less than an hour later, lawmakers endorsed a plan calling on Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, to form a new Cabinet within two weeks. If he fails to do so, the government of the prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, could face a no-confidence vote.

JERUSALEM -- The head of the Palestinian intelligence service was seriously hurt and a bodyguard was killed yesterday in an explosion in the Gaza Strip that the agency labeled an assassination attempt. The blast, coming amid tensions between rival Palestinian factions, stoked worries of further clashes between the new Hamas-led government and the once-dominant Fatah movement led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Gen. Tareq Abu Rajab, an Abbas ally who commands the Palestinian General Intelligence service, was stepping into an elevator in the agency's heavily guarded compound in Gaza City when the blast occurred, Palestinian security officials said.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Shells fired by Israeli forces hit a United Nations school yesterday, killing at least 30 Palestinians who had sought shelter there on a day when Israeli forces pushed deeper into the Gaza Strip and a Hamas rocket struck a town about 20 miles south of Tel Aviv. Street battles rumbled across the Palestinian enclave and bloodshed showed no signs of ebbing, despite renewed calls by Arab and European leaders for the U.N. Security Council to demand a cease-fire. International pressure on Israel intensified after Palestinian medical officials reported that 75 Gazans were killed yesterday as Israeli forces swept into more densely populated areas.

JERUSALEM - Israeli ground forces backed by air and naval power fought their way into urban areas deep inside the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip yesterday, striking at the Palestinian group's hide-outs and rocket-launching sites but also inflicting a heavy toll in civilian lives. Medical authorities in Gaza said 16 children were killed by airstrikes, naval shelling and artillery fire. Israel said it is aiming at Hamas' 15,000-member paramilitary force. Late in the day, Israeli troops entered densely populated areas just north and east of Gaza City, the territorial capital.