Doctors in Gaza City have told Al Jazeera that people have been admitted suffering burns consistent with the use of the controversial chemical white phosphorus.
Human rights campaigners say that Israeli forces have used the munition, which can burn away human flesh to the bone, over Gaza City and Jabaliya in recent days.
Al Jazeera’s Ayman Mohyeldin, reporting from the Shifa hospital in Gaza City, said: “Doctors here say they are seeing unprecedented levels of deep burns.
“They cannot categorically say that white phosphorus is being used, they are saying that the munitions …

Israeli troops and tanks thrust into the Gaza Strip’s densely populated capital from three directions today, drawing Hamas fighters into fierce combat in an offensive expanded by a fresh deployment of army reservists.
The assault on Gaza City coincided with a predawn missile barrage that set 20 homes ablaze in a southern Gaza village. Scores of residents suffered burns and gas inhalation, witnesses said. Doctors who treated the victims said they suspected Israel had fired white phosphorus shells, which can be used to illuminate the nighttime battlefield or to lay down …

Israel and Hamas vowed to keep fighting on Sunday, ignoring international calls to stop the Gaza conflict which entered a 16th day with heavy clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian guerrillas.
Hamas’s leader in exile, Khaled Meshaal, said his Islamist group would not consider a truce until Israel ended its military offensive and lifted a blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Israel sent tanks deeper into the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave and threatened to intensify its air and ground assaults against militants who fired more rockets into the Jewish state.

A number of prominent British Jews have written an open letter calling on the Israeli government to halt its military operations in Gaza immediately.
The letter, published in the Observer, warns the military action, far from improving security, will strengthen extremism and destabilise the region.
The signatories, who declare themselves “passionate supporters of Israel”, include several rabbis.
The first major rally in support of Israel in the UK will take place later.

JERUSALEM — A few weeks ago, Defense Minister Ehud Barak was considered a dead man walking in Israeli politics. Members of his Labor Party were plotting to replace him after elections on Feb. 10, if not before. Under his leadership, the storied party of David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir had sunk so low in the polls that there was serious talk it might disappear.
No one is talking like that now. Twelve days into a punishing war that he is leading against Hamas in Gaza, Labor’s poll numbers are spiking. Mr. …

JERUSALEM — Israel’s conflict with Hamas in Gaza threatened to broaden on Thursday as at least three rockets were fired into the north of Israel from Lebanon.
The rockets, presumably launched in support of Hamas, could presage the opening of a second front. The Israeli Army, in a brief statement, said it “responded with fire against the source of the rockets,” which landed near the town of Nahariya. Two Israelis were slightly wounded, the police said.

The Israeli government will weigh the future of its military operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, as mounting casualties among Palestinian civilians increased pressure for a truce.
At least 40 Palestinians were killed when Israeli forces struck a school run by the United Nations in Gaza, a UN official said. Israel, which struck at least 40 more Hamas targets overnight, said it responded after its soldiers were fired at from the building.
The school deaths yesterday added urgency to diplomatic efforts aimed at reaching a cease-fire as the conflict entered its …

Fighting intensified on the northern outskirts of Gaza City yesterday as a Hamas leader warned that the Islamists would kill Jewish children anywhere in the world in revenge for Israel’s devastating assault.
“They have legitimised the murder of their own children by killing the children of Palestine,” Mahmoud Zahar said in a televised broadcast recorded at a secret location. “They have legitimised the killing of their people all over the world by killing our people.”
Mr Zahar made his first appearance since Israel launched its offensive. Dressed in a dark suit, he …

A ceasefire in the Gaza strip could be secured within days if the smuggling routes that supply arms and money to Hamas can be blocked off, Tony Blair said today as Israel moved its forces deeper into southern Gaza.
But the entire region should brace itself for a “protracted campaign” if the border between the Gaza strip and Egypt – through which Hamas militants are supplied – is not secured, Mr Blair warned.
Israel today demanded that Hamas be prevented from rearming as a main condition of any ceasefire. Mark Regev, …

Israeli mortar rounds blasted a United Nations-run school that had been converted into a refugee shelter for hundreds of Palestinians displaced by the ten-day war in Gaza, killing more than 40 people today.
It was one of three UN schools hit by Israeli ordnance today. The strike against the Fakhora school in the northern town of Jabaliya was the deadliest single attack of an already blood-soaked offensive.
Israeli army officials said that their forces had been targeted by Hamas mortar fire from within the school compound. They named two alleged Hamas …