Reuters: The Palestinian death toll from the air-and-ground offensive has risen to at least 1,073 and there were more than 5,000 wounded, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza. A Palestinian rights group said at least 670 of the dead were civilians.
Thirteen Israelis have been killed -- 10 soldiers and three civilians hit by Hamas rocket fire since Israel launched on December 27 a military campaign it said was aimed at ending such salvoes.
CNN (warehoused version; original CNN has been modified): Israeli forces moved into Gaza City overnight. During the clash with Hamas fighters, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency headquarters complex -- located in a densely populated neighborhood -- was hit repeatedly by shrapnel and artillery.
The burning compound emitted a massive pillar of billowing black smoke. Clashes around the compound in Gaza City made it impossible to extinguish the fires, UNRWA Director John Ging said.
"We warned the Israelis hour by hour through the night of the vulnerabilities here as the shells came closer and closer and shrapnel was coming into the compound on a regular occasion," Ging said. "Nonetheless, we have now been subjected to these direct hits."
Ging identified the source of the fires as white phosphorus shells, whose use is restricted under international law.
"It looks like phosphorus, it smells like phosphorus and it's burning like phosphorus," Ging said. "That's why I'm calling it phosphorus."
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the allegation. But the U.S.-based group Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of using white phosphorus shells in Gaza during its campaign against Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that has ruled Gaza since 2007.
I write this article to Western readers across the social and political spectrum as the Israeli war machine continues to massacre my people in Gaza. To date, almost 1,000 have been killed, nearly half of whom are women and children. Last week's bombing of the UNRWA (UN Relief Works Agency) school in the Jabalya refugee camp was one of the most despicable crimes imaginable, as hundreds of civilians had abandoned their homes and sought refuge with the international agency only to be mercilessly shelled and bombed by Israel. Forty-six children and women were killed in that heinous attack while scores were injured.
Evidently, Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005 did not end its occupation nor, as a result, its international obligations as an occupying power. It continued to control and dominate our borders by land, sea and air. Indeed the UN has confirmed that between 2005 and 2008, the Israeli army killed nearly 1,250 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children. For most of that period the border crossings have remained effectively closed, with only limited quantities of food, industrial fuel, animal feed and a few other essential items, allowed in.
Despite its frantic efforts to conceal it, the root cause of Israel's criminal war on Gaza is the elections of January 2006, which saw Hamas win by a substantial majority. What occurred next was that Israel alongside the United States and the European Union joined forces in an attempt to quash the democratic will of the Palestinian people. They set about reversing the decision first by obstructing the formation of a national unity government and then by making a living hell for the Palestinian people through economic strangulation. The abject failure of all these machinations finally led to this vicious war. . . .
Ismail Haniyeh, the Palestinian Prime Minister, speaking on Al-Aqsa TV in Gaza earlier this week
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