News desk :Some 425,000 people in Gaza have been displaced by fighting, the UN says.That is as much as 25% of the population of the territory. Israel began Operation Protective Edge on 8 July. Since then at least 1,360 Palestinians have been killed, mostly civilians.Some 58 Israelis have been killed, of which 56 were soldiers and two civilians. Earlier on Thursday Israel called up 16,000 reservists, fuelling speculation that the ground attack would be widened.Israel has now called up a total of 86,000 reserves during the Gaza conflict.The United States had meanwhile restocked Israel with ammunition.Israeli attacks in the strip continued Thursday, with witnesses saying that munitions struck the Omar Ibn al-Khatab mosque next to a UN school in the northern town of Beit Lahiya. Israeli fire near a UN school in the Jebaliya camp killed at least 17 people the day before.The White House and the State Department condemned the shelling of the UN-run school in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza in which at least 16 Palestinians were killed, but neither assigned blame to staunch US ally Israel.”Obviously nothing justifies the killing of innocent civilians seeking shelter in a UN facility,” deputy State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf acknowledged, in some of the toughest US comments since the start of the 23-day fighting in the Gaza Strip.”Innocent Palestinians seeking refuge in these schools should not have shells dropped on them, should not come under attack.” The UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA said Israeli forces had hit the school, which had been sheltering some 3,300 Gazans.But despite heated exchanges with reporters, Harf stressed that “we don’t know for certain who shelled this school, we need to get all the facts.”National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan also condemned “those responsible for hiding weapons in United Nations facilities in Gaza” and warned of rising fears that thousands of Palestinians who have been told by Israel to leave their homes increasingly had nowhere to go in the blockaded narrow coastal strip.US officials also warned that patience with “crazy” Israeli criticism of would-be-peacemaker John Kerry had snapped.The Pentagon confirmed the Israeli military had requested additional ammunition to restock its dwindling supplies on July 20, with the US Defense Department approving the sale just three days later.”The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to US national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defense capability,” Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said in a statement.”This defense sale is consistent with those objectives.”Two of the requested munitions came from a little-known stockpile of ammunition stored by the US military on the ground in Israel for emergency use by the Jewish state. The War Reserve Stockpile Ammunition-Israel is estimated to be worth $1 billion.On Thursday Israeli PM Netanyahu Israel was determined to continuing military action against Palestinians “with or without a ceasefire”.In the most controversial incident at least 16 people were killed when shells hit a UN-run school in the Jabaliya district of Gaza City. The US and UN condemned the strike, with the UN secretary general saying “all available evidence” suggested Israeli artillery was the cause.Spokesman Mark Regev told the BBC that Israel would apologise if it discovered it was responsible.”We have a policy – we don’t target civilians,” he said. “It’s not clear to us that it was our fire but we know for a fact there was hostile fire on our people from the vicinity of the school.”Later on Wednesday at least 17 were killed in a strike on a busy market in Shejaiya – a district already badly damaged by Israeli artillery.Israel occupied Gaza in the 1967 Middle East war and only pulled its troops and settlers out in 2005.Israel considered this the end of the occupation, but it still exercises control over most of Gaza’s borders, water and airspace. Egypt controls Gaza’s southern border.Hamas says it will not stop fighting until a blockade, maintained by both Israel and Egypt, is lifted.An initial aerial campaign was widened into a ground offensive on July 17. Since then the campaign has concentrated on destroying more than 30 cross-border tunnels that militants have constructed to carry out attacks on Israeli territory.Israel says that most of the 32 tunnels it has uncovered have now been demolished and that getting rid of the remainder will take no more than a few days.The strike in Beit Lahiya early Thursday damaged water tanks on the roof of a building near the mosque, sending shrapnel flying into the adjacent school compound, where dozens of Palestinians displaced by the fighting had taken shelter.”The shrapnel from the strike on the mosque hit people who were in the street and at the entrance of the school,” said Sami Salebi, an area resident.Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra said at least 15 people were wounded, with three of them in critical condition.Kifah Rafati, 40, was being treated for shrapnel injuries at the nearby Kamal Adwan hospital. She said she and her six children had been sleeping in a classroom facing the mosque when the explosion went off. “There is no safety anywhere,” she said.
