Israeli forces shelled the United Nations headquarters, high-rise apartments, hospitals and media buildings Thursday in their heaviest aerial attacks on Gaza City's crowded neighborhoods in three weeks of war. Hundreds of terrified civilians, many gripping wailing children, fled advancing Israeli troops as warplanes pummelled the battered Palestinian enclave. Dozens of people were killed, medics said, in the single day's attacks that took the Palestinian death toll to nearly 1,100, at least 700 of them civilians. More than 5,000 have been wounded. UN chief Ban Ki-moon expressed “outrage” over the bombing of the UN Works and Relief Agency (UNWRA) compound, which distributes food aid to hundreds of thousands of destitute Gazans in the tiny seaside territory of 1.4 million people. It had only that morning become a makeshift shelter for 700 Gaza City residents seeking sanctuary from relentless Israeli shelling, UN officials in Gaza said. Shells first hit the courtyard where the refugees had taken shelter, then struck garages and the UN's main warehouse, sending thousands of tons of food aid up in flames, said John Ging, director of UNRWA operations in Gaza. Later, fuel supplies went up in flames, sending a thick black plume of smoke into the air. Three people were wounded in the attack, Ging said. “I conveyed my strong protest and outrage to the defense minister and foreign minister and demanded a full explanation,” said Ban in Tel Aviv, who was on a mission in the region to end Israel's devastating offensive against the territory's Hamas rulers. Ban said Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak had assured him the incident had been “a grave mistake” which was being taken “very seriously.” Separately, Israeli shells landed next to a UN school in another Gaza City neighborhood, wounding 14 people who had sought sanctuary there, rescue workers said. In the downtown area, Israeli tanks fired shells at five high-rise buildings, Palestinian witnesses said. Three shells hit the Al-Quds hospital in the neighborhood, setting its pharmacy building ablaze, trapping about 400 patients and staff inside the main hospital building, said a medic. In downtown Gaza, an explosion blasted a tower block that houses the offices of Reuters and several other media organizations, wounding a journalist for the Abu Dhabi television channel and a cameraman . Israeli defense officials said the intensified assault on Gaza City was not a prelude to a new phase of all-out urban warfare in the narrow alleyways of Gaza's big cities. The aim, they said, was to heat up the pressure on Hamas to accede to Israel's demands. “We are doing our own assessments on daily basis and according to them, we will decide when to stop,” Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said.
