512 innocent Palestinians killed by troops as Israeli attack splits Gaza

Israeli troops and tanks, protected by heavy air, sea and artillery fire, sliced through the center of Gaza on Sunday, taking control of rocket launching areas and surrounding the main city, as their government rebuffed diplomatic efforts to end the nine-day assault. In Gaza, residents faced severe power shortages and other deprivations and grew increasingly afraid as the reported death toll of Palestinians passed 512 since the assault began. Following a week of constant air raids and high expectations produced by the days of massing Israeli troops on the border, the first 24 hours of ground combat appeared to have been comparatively restrained. Hamas had warned that Israeli ground troops would find themselves trapped, resulting in numerous casualties. The battles so far have been outside urban areas, however, and Israel reported the death of one soldier during the ground campaign. Four other Israelis, including civilians, were killed by Gazan shelling since Israel began its assault on Dec. 27. Senior Israeli officials said that the fighting could go on for days, if not weeks, and that calls for a cease-fire were premature. Israel aimed its power at Hamas's fighters and infrastructure and said its forces had killed several dozen militants, including a senior leader, and destroyed a smuggling tunnel. Palestinian officials did not confirm the militants' deaths, and it was difficult for foreign news organizations to verify Israel's claims, because journalists have been restricted from entering Gaza. At Shifa, Gaza City's main hospital, dozens of casualties seen being brought in over many hours all appeared to be civilians. Most of the fighting was taking place in northern and eastern Gaza, in areas not far from the Israeli border. But at least five civilians were killed and many wounded on Sunday morning when Israeli shells or rockets landed in the market of Gaza City while people were stocking up on supplies. Rage in the Arab and Muslim worlds intensified over Israel's war, with demonstrations in recent days in Turkey and Lebanon as well as in a number of European capitals. The leaders of Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, which all have diplomatic relations with Israel, condemned the attacks as disproportionate and called for them to end. During rock-throwing demonstrations near the Israeli separation barrier in Qalqilya in the occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian man, according to an Israeli Army spokeswoman. She said that two Palestinians had started to climb the barrier and ignored warning shots from Israeli soldiers. There have been scattered arrests of protesters, including seven Israeli Arabs, since Israel began its ground offensive in Gaza on Saturday night. One Israeli official said about efforts to end the operation, "We still have time." Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said that Mr. Olmert had been constantly on the phone with world leaders and that the goal of the conversations was to construct a mechanism for a cease-fire. Mr. Regev said the point of the fighting was "to reach a situation where there will be quiet in the south and international support for that quiet." In Moscow, President Dmitri A. Medvedev's office said in a statement that he had talked with Mr. Olmert on Sunday night to express concern about Gaza's civilians and stressed "the importance of the swiftest possible cease-fire." The statement also said Russia, a member of the so-called quartet of Middle East mediators that also includes the United States, the European Union and the United Nations, planned to convene a meeting in Moscow to help "normalize the situation in the region." At the United Nations, the United States blocked the Security Council from issuing a formal statement on Saturday night calling for an immediate cease-fire, saying there was no indication Hamas would abide by any agreement. The emergency meeting, called by France, was the latest failed attempt at finding a diplomatic solution at the United Nations. The Security Council has already met three times since the war began. Earlier last week it discussed a draft resolution submitted by Libya that would have called for an end to the fighting. The proposal, drafted by members of the Arab League, was immediately greeted with skepticism by the United States as anti-Israeli, and never reached a vote. However, with the arrival of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, and the top foreign ministers for eight Arab nations in New York on Monday, United Nations officials say they expect to see increasing pressure on the Security Council to take some sort of action. The president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, was expected in the Middle East on Monday to work on a cease-fire solution. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice canceled a planned trip to China to focus on Gaza. President-elect Barack Obama continued to defer publicly to the Bush administration on the matter. Brooke Anderson, Mr. Obama's chief national security spokeswoman, said Saturday that the president-elect was closely monitoring the situation in Gaza, but that "there is one president at a time, and we intend to respect that." In a telephone briefing for a group of foreign correspondents, a senior Israeli military official said that Israeli troops would hold the areas they had taken in Gaza at least for the duration of the operation, to prevent militants from returning to fire rockets. "We don't plan to retake the Gaza Strip, but there are several places we control now and will control later," he said. "If it will be needed, we are prepared to stay there." The senior military official said there had been limited man-to-man combat so far, and that Hamas was fighting back mostly with mortars and various bombs. Reliable reports on the fighting, death toll and civilian situation in Gaza were scarce, since Israel has barred foreign journalists from entering Gaza for most of the past two months and every day since the war began, despite an Israeli Supreme Court order that it permit a pool of foreign correspondents. At the same time, Israel has mounted a public relations push to explain its war to the world, bringing in dozens of officials as spokesmen in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and along the border area. Numerous reporters have been driving along the Israeli-Gaza border straining to see events through binoculars and television camera lenses.