Palestinians faced worsening conditions in the Gaza Strip today after a UN aid agency halted work, saying its staff were at risk from Israeli forces fighting Hamas militants, after two drivers were killed.
Israel also came under sharp Red Cross criticism that it was delaying access to casualties. The reported Palestinian death toll in the 13-day-old conflict topped 700.
"UNRWA decided to suspend all its operations in the Gaza Strip because of the increasing hostile actions against its premises and personnel," Adnan Abu Hasna, a Gaza-based spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
He did not say how long the suspension by the agency, which provides food and other aid to some 750,000 Gazans, would last.
The decision followed the deaths of two Palestinian forklift drivers in an UNRWA convoy hit by an Israeli tank shell. All convoys ferrying humanitarian supplies from at least two key crossing points with Israel were suspended after the incident.
Israeli fire has also hit two UNRWA schools, killing more than 45 Palestinians, medical officials in Gaza said.
Figures from the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza showed that 715 people had been killed and at least 3,000 wounded since the Israeli assault began on Dec. 27.
At least 11 Israelis have been killed, eight of them soldiers, including four hit by "friendly" fire.
Amnesty International today accused both Israel and Hamas of using civilians as human shields in the current Gaza conflict.
Malcolm Smart of Amnesty said: "Israeli soldiers have entered and taken up positions in a number of Palestinian homes, forcing families to stay in a ground floor room while they use the rest of their house as a military base and sniper position.
"This clearly increases the risk to the Palestinian families concerned and means they are effectively being used as human shields."
Amnesty said this use of civilians is unlawful and prohibited under Article 51(7) of the Geneva Conventions.
Mr Smart also criticised Israel's bombing of civilian homes formally used as cover by Palestinian gunmen.
He said: "The Israeli army is well-aware that Palestinian gunmen usually leave the area after having fired and that any reprisal attack against these homes will in most cases cause harm to civilians - not gunmen.
"Fighters on both sides must not carry out attacks from civilian areas but when they do take cover behind a civilian house or building to fire it does not make that building and its civilian inhabitants a legitimate military target".
Meanwhile, the International Committee of the Red Cross said today relief workers found four starving children sitting next to their dead mothers and other corpses in a house in a part of Gaza City bombed by Israeli forces.
The ICRC accused Israel of delaying ambulance access to the hit area and demanded it grant safe access for Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances to return to evacuate more wounded.
"This is a shocking incident," said Pierre Wettach, ICRC chief for Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
"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," he said.
In unusually strong terms, the neutral agency said it believed Israel had breached international humanitarian law in the incident.
In a written response, the Israeli army said it works in coordination with international aid bodies assist civlians and that it "in no way intentionally targets civilians".
The army said any serious allegations would need to be investigated properly after a formal complaint was received, "within the constraints of the military operation taking place".
Despite the hellish conditions for the 1.5 million Palestinians crammed into the coastal strip, international efforts to secure a ceasefire have yet to bear fruit.
Neither Israel nor Hamas has yet agreed to the details of an Egyptian-European proposal that also has US support.
Israel is determined to halt Hamas rocket fire on its southern towns. Prime minister Ehud Olmert said the goal that "quiet will reign supreme" in the area had not been achieved. A decision on further military action "is still ahead of us", he said.
More than a dozen rockets hit southern Israel today.
In the Gaza Strip, Israeli air strikes and ground attacks killed at least nine civilians and three gunmen, medical officials said. The army said one Israeli soldier was killed. Al Jazeera television reported a second Israeli death but it was not immediately confirmed by the army.
The Palestinian dead included two brothers aged six and 13, killed when an Israeli air strike missed a group of Islamic Jihad fighters in Abassan in the southern Gaza Strip. Four other passersby were wounded, medical workers and residents said.
A Ukrainian woman, who had refused to leave Gaza, and her son were killed when a tank shell hit their house, medics said.
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli police shot dead a Palestinian who tried to set fire to a petrol station at a Jewish settlement, police said.
Israel again suspended its assault briefly today to help Gaza's inhabitants stock up on much-needed supplies. The army observed a similar three-hour lull yesterday.
Israel has said it accepts the "principles" of the European-Egyptian ceasefire proposal. Washington has urged Israel to study the plan.
Officials with Hamas, shunned by the West for refusing to recognise Israel and renounce violence, said the group was still considering it.
European governments have offered to back the proposal with an EU border force to stop Hamas, which took over Gaza in 2007, from rearming via tunnels under the border with Egypt.
The plan would also address Palestinian calls for an end to Israel's economic blockade of the Gaza Strip. Hamas called off a six-month ceasefire late last month, accusing Israel of breaking an agreement to open border crossings to more supplies.
Reuters