Updated at 12:40 pm: Israeli naval commandos clashed with Hamas militants in a raid on the coast of the Gaza Strip on Sunday, in what appeared to be the first ground assault of a six-day Israeli offensive on the Palestinian territory which has killed at least 165 people.
With aerial support from fighter jets, the Israeli force attacked a site in northern Gaza allegedly used to launch long-range rockets, an Israeli military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, said.
The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, confirmed the exchange of gunfire "between our fighters and soldiers of the Zionist navy which tried to penetrate the zone of Sudaniya" in northwest Gaza.
Hamas said its fighters had fired at the Israeli force offshore, preventing them from landing. Lerner said the Palestinian movement wounded four commandos, but the launch site was hit.
Lerner said the forces had "completed their mission" and that the results of the raid "would be the first published ground activity" by naval troops in Gaza, in an offensive that Palestinian officials said has killed 165 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians.
Saturday was the bloodiest day since the conflict erupted on Tuesday, claiming 56 Palestinian lives including a two-year-old child and a 73-year-old woman.
Saturday airstrikes included one that hit a center for the disabled, and another that killed two nephews of Gaza's former Hamas premier, Ismail Haniyeh.
The strike on the center killed two disabled women and wounded four, the center's director said.
"They didn't understand what was happening and they were so frightened," Jamila Alaywa said of those inside the care home.
"They fired the rocket and it hit us without any warning."
Later on Saturday night, an Israeli strike hit the Tuffah district in eastern Gaza City, targeting a home and a mosque and killing nearly 20 people, medics said.
The latest attacks on Sunday killed a teenage boy and a woman, medics said.
According to emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra, one strike on the northern town of Jabaliya struck a house, killing a 14-year-old boy.
Shortly afterwards, another strike killed a woman in the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza, he said.
Elsewhere, a man injured in an earlier strike died of his wounds, hiking the toll to 165, Qudra said.
More than 1,000 people have been injured.
No Israeli has been killed by Hamas rocket fire.
Intensified attacks
Israel says a ground invasion of Gaza remains an option, and it has already mobilized about 20,000 reservists to do so, but most attacks have so far been from the air.
Hamas, the leading political movement in Gaza, has fired hundreds of rockets into Occupied Palestine, striking the deepest inside the territory ever.
Many of the rockets have been shot down above Israeli towns by Iron Dome, a partly US-funded interceptor system. Israel rushed an eighth Iron Dome into service on Saturday to counter stronger-than-expected rocket fire from Gaza.
The Israeli military claims more than 800 rockets had been launched since its offensive began on Tuesday. Israel said it has carried out 1,320 attacks on so-called “terror targets.”
The violence shows no signs of abating as the international community urged on both sides to end the violence. Despite the rising Palestinian death toll and with no Israelis killed, the UN Security Council unanimously urged both Israel and Hamas to respect "international humanitarian laws" and stop the loss of life.
"France calls for an immediate ceasefire," Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said in a television interview. "We condemn the Hamas rocket attacks against Israeli civilians, but we also call on Israel to show restraint in its response and in particular to respect international law and to ensure that civilian casualties are avoided."
The chief diplomats of Britain, France, Germany and the United States are due to discuss how to achieve a truce when they meet in Vienna on Sunday.
Israeli aircraft carried out a series of attacks in Gaza, including against a police headquarters and a security compound, Palestinian officials said.
A woman and a three-year-old girl were killed in the air strikes in the early hours of Sunday morning, Palestinian officials said.
An Israeli air strike on the home of Gaza's police chief killed 18 people on Saturday, Gaza's health ministry said, in what was the single deadliest attack of the offensive, while Hamas fired its largest salvo of rockets yet on Tel Aviv.
A Hamas source said the police chief, Tayseer Al-Batsh, was in critical condition. All of those killed in the air strike which television footage showed was reduced to piles of rubble, were members of Al-Batsh's family.
Qudra said 45 people were wounded and others were still trapped under the rubble where rescue workers were searching.
Meanwhile, three rockets apparently targeting Jerusalem fell short, hitting Hebron and Bethlehem, the Israeli army and Palestinian security sources said, with no reports of casualties.
Of four fired at Tel Aviv, three were intercepted above the city and another hit open ground south of it, the army said.
Fire was also exchanged across Israel's northern border.
Rockets fired late on Saturday from Lebanon hit Israel, and Israeli forces said it responded with artillery fire.
"Initial reports indicate that at least two rockets fired from Lebanon hit open areas north of Nahariya. No damage or injuries, thus far," an Israeli military statement said.
A Lebanese security source said three rockets had been fired from Lebanon.
Hamas claimed responsibility for the rocket fire from Lebanon, in the second such incident in two days.
There has been little sign that either side is interested in an immediate end to the hostilities, which appear to be ramping up.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said Friday that "no international pressure will prevent us from striking, with all force, against the terrorist organization which calls for our destruction."
Haniyeh called on Israel to stop its deadly military campaign on the Gaza Strip.
"(Israel) is the one that started this aggression and it must stop, because we are (simply) defending ourselves."
"The Israelis don't want to let us live"
Thousands of Palestinians were fleeing northern Gaza on Sunday after a night of intense Israeli strikes and an explicit warning from the Israeli army that the already intense air raids were set to escalate.
In Beit Lahiya, whole streets were emptying, with residents fleeing with all the belongings they could carry, by car, by donkey- and horse-drawn carts, and on foot.
"Last night there was so much shelling that no one could sleep, it was terrifying," said one man, who gave his name only as Farid.
He was fleeing with six family members, riding alongside them on a motorbike piled high with blankets.
"I'm going to try to go to a school, anywhere that is safe," he told AFP.
Mohammed Sultan packed his family's belongings onto a horse-drawn cart, with five children sitting among the hastily assembled items.
He walked alongside the cart, with other adult relatives, heading for a school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA).
Earlier on Sunday, the Israeli army said it would drop leaflets over northern Gaza warning residents to leave their homes "immediately" ahead of a fresh wave of attacks it said would begin at midday.
But Sultan said he had not received any warning.
"We didn't get any warning, but there was firing all around us all night," he told AFP.
"We were terrified and so afraid for our children," he said. "It was total war."
During the night, Samari al-Atar, who lives in the Atatra neighborhood - one of the areas Israel said it would hit hard - fled to an UNRWA school in Gaza City.
"We tried to shelter inside the house but we heard the sounds of people screaming and when we looked outside there were many people fleeing their homes," she said.
"It was the middle of the night, and I gathered the children, they were so afraid," she added, her voice breaking as she started to cry.
"Even as we were fleeing, there was firing all around us... we couldn't take anything with us, the children were barefoot."
Inside the school compound, one boy seemed almost catatonic as he spoke in a long, monotone about fleeing his home, his eyes downcast and fixed on the floor.
Maani al-Ataar described the terror of fleeing by night, as Israeli planes circled overhead.
"People were screaming and there were old men who couldn't walk properly, the younger men had to support them," she said.
"There was no electricity, so the road was pitch black."
Robert Turner, director of UNRWA operations said thousands of displaced people were already sheltering in its schools across Gaza.
"UNRWA now has eight schools sheltering about 4,000 displaced Gazans. More are arriving by the minute. They are mostly fleeing areas in the north, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanun," he told reporters.
In Beit Lahiya, Farida Zayed was packing up her belongings and preparing to flee, without knowing where she would go.
"People say they are going to the schools, but Israel has bombed schools before. Even the hospitals have been bombed," she said.
"We've lost everything, our future and the future of our children," she said.
"The Israelis don't want to let us live."
(Reuters, AFP, Al-Akhbar)
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