AMID growing international alarm over the high civilian death toll, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) yesterday alleged Israeli troops had prevented rescue workers from reaching injured Palestinians.
This is the closest the neutral organisation has come to accusing Israel of war crimes.
Rescue workers found four small children next to their dead mother in a house in Gaza City after being denied access by the Israeli army for four days, the ICRC said in a statement.
"They were too weak to stand up on their own. One man was also found alive, too weak to stand up," it said.
The children and wounded had to be transported by donkey carts to ambulances because large earth walls erected by the Israeli army made it impossible to bring ambulances into the immediate area, the ICRC said.
A Red Cross official, Pierre Wettach, called the incident "shocking", saying: "The Israeli military must have been aware of the situation, but did not assist the wounded. Neither did they make it possible for us or the Palestinian Red Crescent to assist the wounded."
Israel says the military campaign is aimed at dealing a blow to Hamas and ending its rocket fire against southern Israel.
The army said in a written response to the ICRC that Hamas used Palestinian civilians as human shields, while an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman said that "there are some areas of intense fighting and in these areas it is difficult for medical aid to get in".
However, a senior officer quoted in yesterday's Haaretz newspaper pointed towards a different reality. The officer, identified as Lieutenant Colonel Amir, an engineering corps commander, said: "We are very violent. We do not hesitate to use any means to prevent our troops from being hit."
Commentators compare the situation to that of Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which also caused heavy civilian casualties.
By noon yesterday, 712 Palestinians had died, 169 of them children, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, based in Gaza City. Eleven Israelis have died from rocket fire and from ground fighting in Gaza.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency suspended its activities yesterday and criticised the Israeli army, saying: "We've been co-ordinating with them and yet our staff continue to be killed." This followed the death of two Palestinian forklift drivers in an UNRWA convoy hit by an Israeli tank shell.
WHAT NEXTTHE United States, Britain and France have dropped objections to a binding UN resolution on Gaza and are talking to Arab states about one urging an immediate ceasefire, diplomats said yesterday.
"We are looking at a resolution which would include a call for an immediate ceasefire and action to stop smuggling of arms (to Hamas militants] and open the border crossings," a western diplomat said.
Arab countries, many facing strong anti-Israeli sentiment at home, have insisted the UN Security Council must issue a binding resolution that would force Israel to end its military campaign in the Gaza Strip immediately.
Israel has opposed the idea of the Security Council passing anything on the Gaza crisis.
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