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GAZA CITY: The heaviest fighting of Israel's war on Hamas raged in Gaza's main city early on Tuesday as the Israeli government fended off appeals to stop the death toll from mounting further.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy led new calls to halt the conflict which doctors say has left at least 555 Palestinians dead. But Israeli ministers insisted the offensive aimed at halting militant rocket attacks will go on.
With helicopters firing heavy machine guns from above, Israeli tanks shot shells into the dense Shejaiya district of eastern Gaza City, residents said. Flares lit up the night skies as explosions rocked the neighbourhood.
Israeli jets also bombed the abandoned Hamas security service complex in the centre of the city, leaving it ablaze.
Hamas said its fighters unleashed missiles on seven tanks in Shejaiya and killed 10 Israeli soldiers. Arabic news channels Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera said three or four Israeli soldiers were killed and about 30 wounded.
The Israeli military confirmed there had been heavy fighting but made no comment on casualties.
At least 13 children were among 60 bodies taken to Gaza hospitals on Monday after air and tank assaults across the territory, medics said.
Almost 100 children are among the dead since Israel began a wave of air raids on December 27, Gaza's emergency services said. More than 2,700 people have been wounded. The International Red Cross said people were dying because ambulances could not get to them.
But as Israel intensified "Operation Cast Lead," Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni rejected European calls for an immediate ceasefire.
"We are fighting with terror and we are not reaching an agreement with terror," she declared after meeting an EU ministerial delegation led by Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg.
"When Israel is being targeted, Israel is going to retaliate," Livni said.
The French president arrived later to reinforce the ceasefire campaign .
After a meeting in Ramallah with Palestinian Authority leader Mahmud Abbas, Sarkozy said he would tell Israeli leaders that "the violence must halt."
In Jerusalem, he said: "We, Europe, want a ceasefire as soon as possible. Time is working against peace. The weapons must be silenced and there must be a temporary humanitarian truce."
The French president called the Hamas rocket attacks on Israel "irresponsible and unforgivable," sparking a retort from the Islamists that he was "totally biased" toward Israel.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called for an immediate ceasefire after telephone talks with Abbas earlier on Monday, the Kremlin said.
Abbas went to the UN Security Council in New York to bolster a new campaign by Arab nations to get a resolution passed condemning Israel's operation.
But US President George W. Bush said any Gaza truce must ensure Hamas militants can no longer fire rockets at Israeli towns.
"I understand Israel's desire to protect itself and that the situation now taking place in Gaza was caused by Hamas," he said.
Israeli warplanes carried out more than 40 air strikes on Monday. The military said they hit a mosque "where arms were being stored" as well as houses and tunnels that they said were used as arms caches.
Naval ships off the coast also bombarded targets to help the ground offensive launched on Saturday night, and artillery hit the Bureij refugee camp where three people were killed.
A couple and their five children were killed by one navy shell, medics said. Three children were killed by a tank shell in the Gaza City suburbs and two were killed in Shati by a naval strike, they said.
Israel says dozens of Hamas fighters have been killed and one Israeli soldier has been confirmed dead and 55 wounded since Saturday.
Defence Minister Ehud Barak said the war will go on. "We have hit Hamas hard, but we have not yet reached all the goals that we have set for ourselves and the operation continues," he told a parliamentary committee.
Three civilians and one soldier have been killed by rockets fired from Gaza over the past 10 days. More than 30 rocket and missile attacks were reported on Monday. One hit a kindergarten which was closed because of the crisis.
Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since seizing power in the densely populated Mediterranean coastal strip in June 2007, remained defiant.
"Victory is coming," the movement's senior leader in Gaza, Mahmud Zahar, said in a television address.
"They (Israel) have legitimised the murder of their own children by killing the children of Palestine," he said. "They have legitimised the destruction of their synagogues and their schools by hitting our mosques and our schools."
Israel faces intense international pressure to ease the suffering of the 1.5 million Gaza population, which has no power or water supplies and endures a daily struggle to get food.
Eighty truckloads of food and fuel were allowed to cross into Gaza after long delays on Monday while aid agencies organised transportation on the Gaza side.
- AFP/ls/yb
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