Israeli troops shot dead two women, wounded 10 others and bombarded Gaza with air strikes today, in the pursuit of gunmen holed up in a mosque.
Medics carry the body of a Palestinian woman killed after she was acting as a human shield at the entrance of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip
During one of its bloodiest assaults since it withdrew in 2005 after 38 years of military rule, Israel killed at least 16 Palestinians in Gaza, half of them civilians.
In the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun about 50 veiled women, answering an appeal broadcast on radio, marched on a mosque where about 60 Palestinian gunmen were sheltering to act as cover against Israeli troops.
Television footage showed Israeli forces opening fire and one of the women fall dead. The Israeli army said it had fired at armed Palestinians and was investigating whether it had also shot the women.
Palestinian gunmen, including some from Hamas, managed to flee the Beit Hanoun mosque. Moments later, its roof collapsed.
"We are very cautious about the issue of harming anyone uninvolved," a senior Israeli military source said of the mosque shootings. "I think overall the operation is very successful. We will check to see if there was something wrong."
It was the third day of a ground assault on Beit Hanoun, the largest operation Israel has conducted in the Gaza Strip in months and designed to put a stop to militants firing homemade rockets into Israel.
"The president demands from the UN Security Council to immediately intervene to stop the Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip and the massacres Israel is committing for the third consecutive day," President Mahmoud Abbas's office said in a statement.
Israeli air strikes in the northern town of Beit Lahiya killed a militant from al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a rescue worker and another two Palestinian civilians, hospital and security sources said.
One of the missiles slammed into a group of militants who were planting a bomb near Israeli troops in the area, Palestinian witnesses said.
An Israeli air strike also killed a Palestinian, whose identity was also unclear, in Beit Hanoun.
A member of a Hamas-led security force who was injured in an Israeli strike against a car carrying men from the group in the southern Gaza town of Rafah died of his wounds, hospital officials said. The army said it targeted Hamas militants.
Militants from the Islamist group fired two rockets into southern Israel on Friday, causing no casualties.
"Bombardment for bombardment and blood for blood," Hamas, which heads the Palestinian government, said in a statement.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader, expressed defiance and described Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories as an act of "blind terror".