Israel kills 46 Palestinians on deadliest day in Gaza

closer to Israel’s heartland. Not all of the Gazans killed on Saturday were immediately identified, but at least 13 militants and 17 civilians died. The civilians included two unidentified children, a 17-year-old girl and her 16-year-old brother, a 45-year-old man and his 20-year-old son, and two sisters thought to be in their early 20s.
The sisters and another civilian were killed by tank shells that struck two houses in separate attacks, Palestinian officials said. The Israeli military said it was unaware of tank shells hitting houses. At one of the damaged houses, paramedics rushing an unmoving woman lying on a stretcher, her face covered with a cloth, out of a room clouded with dust. One of the unidentified boys was killed during a series of four evening airstrikes, a medical official said.
Elsewhere in Jebaliya, a wounded man and boy lay in a gutter near a dead man. Ambulance workers took away the dead man as a youth appealed to paramedics to treat the wounded.
“Take them, they are still alive,” he pleaded. Another man urged the wounded to “bear witness,” or proclaim their Muslim faith before they die. The two began reciting a Muslim prayer near a boy whose lower body was ripped by shrapnel. Tareq Dardouna, a Jebaliya resident, said a relative was killed outside his home in the crossfire that began at 3 a.m.
“His body is still on the ground,” Dardouna said in a telephone interview from his home, where he was tending to four wounded people amid screaming children. “Ambulances tried to come, but they came under fire. ... We are in a real war.” Israeli government spokesman David Baker said Israel was “compelled to continue to take these defensive measures” to protect more than 200,000 Israelis living under the threat of Palestinian rocket barrages.
Militants “hide behind their own civilians, using them as human shields, while actively targeting Israeli population centers,” Baker said. “They bear the responsibility for the results.” The Israeli soldiers died in the morning but publication had been held up by the Israeli military censorship until their families could be notified. Seven Israeli soldiers were wounded in the clashes, and two children and a woman were slightly injured in rocket attacks in and near Ashkelon, the military said.
The U.N. shuttered 37 schools it runs in northern Gaza because of the fighting, affecting some 40,000 students said Christopher Gunness, a U.N. official. Mosques across northern Gaza and Hamas-affiliated radio issued a call for civilians to stay at home, while militants vowed to fight on. Hamas remained defiant. “We will respond to any aggression ... with all available means,” said Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas’ military wing.
Mashaal also blamed his Fatah rivals for helping along Israel’s attacks. “I accuse the president of the Palestinian Authority of providing coverage of this holocaust in Gaza,” Mashaal said in Damascus. Hamas has said Abbas’ condemnation of rocket fire has given a pretext to Israel’s assault on Gaza. Hamas military spokesman Abu Obeida vowed retaliation.
“We will respond to any aggression...with every available means,” he said. Journalists also came under fire in Jebaliya and a cameraman for Dubai TV, Mahmoud Ajrami, was wounded. A health official said 35 ambulances were lying idle because they did not have fuel to power them. Israel, which supplies all of Gaza’s fuel, cut back supplies in recent months in an effort to increase pressure on Hamas to rein in the rocket launchers.