Gaza City (CNN) -- The Israeli military said
Thursday that it is calling up 16,000 additional reservists, bolstering
its forces for its fight against Hamas in Gaza after a request for more
ammunition from the United States.
The addition brings the
total number of reservists Israel has called up since the beginning of
the operation against Hamas to 86,000, a military spokeswoman said.
The conflict has killed more than 1,300 people in Gaza, most of them civilians. Fifty-six Israeli soldiers have been killed.
While U.S. officials have called on Israel to do more to protect
civilians, the United States has agreed to Israel's request to resupply
it with several types of ammunition, a U.S. defense official told CNN on
condition of anonymity. It's not an emergency sale, the official said.
Among the items being bought are tank rounds and illumination rounds,
the Pentagon said. Earlier, officials had said that 120mm mortar rounds
and 40mm ammunition for grenade launchers were bought, but later
corrected themselves to say that this ammunition was not in this
shipment.
Shells land near U.N. school
Meanwhile, a number of
shells fell Thursday next to a U.N. school housing displaced residents
-- a day after another school-turned-shelter was hit by artillery
killing more than a dozen people.
"The school itself was
not targeted, it was nearby the school," Adnan Abu Hasna, a spokesman
for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), said about the
Thursday incident.
No one was killed inside the school -- the Beit Lahiya School for Girls, he said. Eight people were slightly injured.
But Gaza health workers are struggling to deal with the relentless stream of dead and wounded.
"The hospitals in Gaza
yesterday had a very difficult time. All the hospital morgues were
flooding with dead bodies, and the injured were laying on hospital
floors because of the lack of hospital beds," said Ashraf al-Qidra,
spokesman for the Gaza Ministry of Health.
On Wednesday, artillery
fire struck a different school -- the Jabalya Elementary Girls School --
that was housing more than 3,000 displaced Palestinians.
The United Nations blamed Israel for the attack. The Palestinian Health Ministry said 20 were killed.
A 'likely war crime'?
Wednesday's attack was the sixth on a U.N.-run school since the conflict began on July 8.
Amnesty International, noting that UNRWA shared its coordinates with the
Israeli army 17 times, said the Jabalya attack was a "likely war
crime."
"If the strike on this school was the result of Israeli artillery fire
it would constitute an indiscriminate attack and a likely war crime,"
said Philip Luther, director of the Middle East and North Africa
Programme at Amnesty International. "Artillery should never be used
against targets in crowded civilian areas and its use in such a manner
would never be considered a 'surgical' strike."
Israel has said errant Hamas rocket fire is responsible for some of the attacks in Gaza.
Calls for civilian protection
The violence between Israel's military and Palestinian militants is
playing out against a backdrop of failed humanitarian cease-fire
attempts, with militants firing rockets from Gaza into Israel and
Israelis responding with airstrikes.
A large part of the criticism has been leveled at Israel and its airstrikes, which have bombarded Gaza.
Chile, Peru, Brazil and Ecuador have pulled their ambassadors out of Tel Aviv to protest the Israeli offensive.
Israel, in turn, has accused Hamas of hiding weapons, including rockets, in schools and launching attacks from near shelters.
'This is a disaster'
The incessant attacks and counterattacks are taking a terrible toll on Gazans.
More than 219,000
Palestinians are packed into 86 shelters across Gaza, the U.N. said.
That equals about 12% of all of Gaza's population.
Clean water is inaccessible for most. And some 3,600 people have lost their homes.
"We cannot supply
electricity" for hospitals, sewage treatment or domestic use, said Fathi
al-Sheikh Khalil, deputy chairman of the Palestinian Energy Natural
Resources Authority in Gaza. "This is a disaster."
The Israeli Foreign
Ministry said it sent 43 trucks carrying 750 tons of food, medicine and
supplies to Gaza on Wednesday. It also said it has sent fuel.
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