Neighborhood Ravaged on Deadliest Day So Far for Both Sides in Gaza
Mr. Kerry, who used his appearances on the talk shows to vociferously defend Israel’s right to take action, expressed his own consternation in private critical comments that were captured by Fox News on a live microphone. Mr. Kerry is heard to say to an aide: “It’s a hell of a pinpoint operation,” adding, “We got to get over there.”
His later answers to on-air questions suggested that he had been speaking sarcastically of an operation that is aimed at militants but had killed so many Palestinian civilians, including many children. He is expected to arrive in Egypt on Monday.
Late Sunday night, diplomats on the Security Council called for an “immediate cessation of hostilities” in brief remarks to the news media, falling far short of the resolution that Palestinians had hoped for.
Mr. Ban called on Israel to halt its operation in Gaza immediately, saying, “Israel must exercise maximum restraint and do far more to protect civilians.” He also called for an end to the rocket fire from Gaza.
Mr. Ban spoke in Doha, Qatar, hours before a scheduled meeting with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority. Mr. Abbas called the Israeli action in Shejaiya “a crime against humanity,” according to Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency.
Like other Israeli officials, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israeli military spokesman, noted that ground forces moved into Shejaiya after area residents had been warned to leave for days. But some residents have said they are unsure where they could go to be safe in the small, densely populated enclave.
Colonel Lerner said Hamas had “fortified” the whole neighborhood not far from the border with Israel, building a labyrinth of tunnels beneath the houses, which he called “Lower Gaza.” The fighting started about 1 a.m. and lasted about seven hours. Colonel Lerner said the Hamas fighters were armed with antitank missiles, rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons.
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A Palestinian family collected belongings from the rubble of their home in Rafah after it was struck by air missiles.CreditSergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
As the battle waned, the horror unfolded. Dark smoke rose at the edge of Shejaiya, and shelling cracked and thumped nearby with just a few seconds’ pause between rounds. Clusters of people periodically emerged from the narrower streets and rushed up the hill toward downtown.
A chain of five children holding hands trotted uphill, dragged by an adult — the smallest boy, around 3, with an expression of confusion and terror. Barefoot, he clutched his flip-flops in his hand. Taxis ventured only to the bottom of the street, where they picked up pedestrians, so many on occasion that some had to sit in an open hatchback or trunk. In the chaos, many parents were separated from their children.
At Shifa Hospital, a girl who looked about 9 was brought into the emergency room and laid on a gurney, blood soaking the shoulder of her shirt. Motionless and barely alive, she stared at the ceiling, her mouth open. There was no relative with her to give her name. The medical staff stood quietly around her. Every now and then, they checked her vital signs, until it was time. They covered her with a white sheet, and she was gone. A few moments later, a new patient lay on the gurney.
The hospital grounds were crowded with displaced families sitting on the grass. Taghreed Harazin, 34, sat under a gazebo with her 6-month-old son, Diaa, in the car seat in which she had carried him on foot until finding a taxi. She said she had believed the evacuation order was only for the eastern part of the neighborhood, and mistakenly thought she would be safe at home. Moving was frightening, she said, because of airstrikes.
But during the night, heavy shelling started. They went to the basement for three hours, then ventured out at dawn.
As the family dashed through the streets to avoid crashing shells, Ms. Harazin, said, she saw the decapitated body of a boy who looked about 4.
“We are not Hamas, and we are not with the others,” Ms. Harazin said. “We just want to live in our homes.”
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The funeral in Nahariya, Israel, on Sunday for an army sergeant killed by Hamas.CreditAndrew Burton/Getty Images
Asked what she thought of Hamas’s handling of the current war, she said, “Sometimes it’s difficult to express your opinion.” She said her husband had been beaten for complaining about Hamas.
Wadha Abu Amr, 62, said her family were refugees from what is now Beersheba, who fled in 1948 during the war over Israel’s founding.
“I’m afraid that this is another 1948,” she said, “God forbid. We were driven out in 1948 and we are being driven out again now.”
In the worst-hit area, a cinder-block building had been flattened; a neighboring one was only partially standing and others across the street were burned. On side streets, glass and rubble littered the ground, and the walls were pocked with shrapnel marks. Workers tried to pull bodies from rubble.
Several men appeared to be fighters, emerging from a hole broken in a concrete wall and shooing photographers away.
The remains of an exploded ambulance littered one street, the engine blown away from the ripped body of the vehicle. During the fighting, a Palestinian journalist who had ridden with an ambulance crew into the neighborhood was killed, along with a paramedic, whose body lay on a stretcher at Shifa Hospital, still in green scrubs.
In Israel, the mood was grim but determined. The military, suffering its heaviest loss in a single day since the 2006 war in Lebanon, said seven of the 13 soldiers were killed when militants detonated an explosive device against their armored personnel carrier, three died in clashes with militants and three died trapped in a burning building.
The senior military official, who briefed reporters in Tel Aviv and spoke on the condition of anonymity in line with army rules, said the forces faced hundreds of Hamas fighters.
“It was a real battle there,” he said. “They were hiding in the apartments, shooting at the Israeli soldiers from the apartments, from the houses, from the windows.”
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