GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Escalating their ground offensive, Israeli troops backed by tanks and warplanes battled Hamas militants in a crowded neighborhood of Gaza City early Sunday. The fighting, including heavy Israeli tank fire, killed 65 Palestinians and 13 Israeli soldiers, forced thousands to flee, and damaged or destroyed dozens of homes.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the offensive would continue "as long as necessary" to end attacks from Gaza on Israeli civilians.
But Hamas seems defiant, international cease-fire efforts are stalled, and international criticism is becoming more vocal as the death toll among Palestinian civilians rises.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the bombardment of Gaza City's Shijaiyah neighborhood, calling it an "atrocious action." He also demanded an immediate halt to the Israeli offensive as well as rocket fire from Gaza. "All sides need to be assured that international humanitarian law counts -- and that there will be accountability and justice for crimes committed by any party," he said.
Several diplomats said the U.N. Security Council would hold an emergency session at 9:30 p.m. Sunday at the request of council member Jordan on the situation in Gaza.
"This situation is intolerable," President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority said in a televised speech from Doha, Qatar. He called the Israeli attacks "crimes against humanity."
The Palestinians circulated a draft resolution that "condemns all violence and hostilities directed against civilians and all acts of terrorism."
Abbas was expected to meet Sunday in Doha with Ban and Qatari officials to discuss an Egyptian proposal for ending the fighting, according to Palestinian officials. Khaled Meshal, the political leader of Hamas, is also based in Qatar.
The ferocious battle in Shijaiyah came on the third day of Israel's ground offensive, which had been preceded by a 10-day air campaign.
In all, at least 432 Palestinians were killed and more than 3,000 wounded in the past two weeks. The overall death toll on the Israeli side rose to 20, including 18 soldiers, along with dozens of wounded troops, during that period.
On Sunday evening, Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri in Gaza claimed his group had captured an Israeli soldier. An announcement on Gaza TV of the soldier's capture set off celebration in the streets of Gaza City.
But the claim could not immediately be verified, and the Israeli military said it was investigating the report. Hamas has made similar claims of capturing Israelis in the past that were not true. For Israelis, a captured soldier would be a nightmare scenario. Hamas-allied militants seized an Israeli soldier in a cross-border raid in 2006 and held him captive in Gaza until Israel traded more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, some of whom were involved in grisly killings, for his return in 2011.
Sunday's battle began when Israeli troops backed by tanks entered the densely populated Shijaiyah district just after midnight. They were met by a "huge" level of resistance by Hamas fighters who fired anti-tank missiles, rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons from houses and buildings, said Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an army spokesman.
Residents said they came under intense Israeli tank fire.
"The gate of hell has opened, and shrapnel came through the windows," Shijaiyah resident Jawad Hassanain said by phone. He and his family fled to a nearby building after their house shook from explosions.
Casualties were rushed to Gaza's central Shifa hospital. Wailing parents, some covered with blood or dust from debris, carried children peppered by shrapnel, and the emergency room quickly overflowed, forcing doctors to treat some patients in a hallway.
During a brief Red Cross-brokered lull later in the day, rescue workers toured the neighborhood to retrieve the dead, pulling bodies from the rubble of homes.
The 13 Israeli soldiers were killed in Shijaiyah, including gunbattles and rocket attacks. In the deadliest, Gaza fighters detonated a bomb near an armored personnel carrier, killing seven soldiers inside, the army said. In another, three soldiers were killed when they became trapped in a burning building, it said.
Two Americans who were soldiers for the Israel Defense Force were among those killed. Stuart Steinberg of Southern California confirmed the death of his 24-year-old son Max Steinberg on Sunday. Earlier Sunday, the Israeli military said in a statement that 21-year-old Sgt. Nissim Sean Carmeli of South Padre Island, Texas, was killed in combat in the Gaza Strip.
Despite the losses, the army chief, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, said Israel intends escalate the operation. Gaza residents received automated phone calls late Sunday, warning them to evacuate refugee camps in the center of the Gaza Strip.
Israel had launched the campaign to hurt Hamas' ability to fire rockets and to destroy tunnels dug by the militants to sneak into Israel to carry out attacks.
Shijaiyah was targeted as a Hamas stronghold and because 8 percent of more than 1,700 rockets fired at Israel since July 8 were launched from there, said Lerner.
The military said that since the beginning of ground operations late last week, it has killed 110 Gaza fighters and targeted more than 1,000 sites linked to militants. Soldiers also exposed 14 tunnels, all interconnected and leading toward Israel, and detonated six of them, including one with a length of three quarters of a mile and an access point within a house, the army said.
"It's like the Underground, the Metro or the subway," said Lerner, the army spokesman, referring to the tunnel system.
Netanyahu said in nationally televised comments Sunday that the ground campaign is vital to Israel's security because the tunnels could be used for "mega terror attacks and kidnappings," but acknowledged the operation is "full of risks."
Speaking earlier to CNN, Netanyahu said the ultimate goal is to "restore a sustainable quiet" for Israel's citizens. Once that is achieved, he said, he hopes to enlist the international community "to demilitarize Gaza," but did not explain what that would entail.
Asked about the mounting number of dead and wounded among Palestinians, he said Israel is targeting only militants.
"All civilian casualties are unintended by us, but intended by Hamas. They want to pile up as many civilian dead as they can. ... It's gruesome," Netanyahu said. "They use telegenically dead Palestinians for their cause. They want the more dead, the better."
Meanwhile, a speedy cease-fire seems elusive, as the U.S. and some of the regional powers disagree on how to resolve the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Hamas rejected Egypt's proposal last week that both sides halt fire and then discuss a possible easing of the Gaza border blockade, enforced by Israel and Egypt since Hamas seized Gaza in 2007.
For Hamas, easing the blockade is key to survival, after an intensified border closure of Gaza by Egypt in the past year drove the movement into a crippling financial crisis. Hamas has insisted on guarantees concerning the blockade before it stops fighting and has demanded that others, including Qatar, join Egypt as a mediator.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry sided with Israel and Egypt on Sunday, saying giving in to Hamas' conditions for a cease-fire would mean rewarding terrorism. Kerry told NBC's Meet the Press that he will head to the Middle East in coming days to help with cease-fire efforts. He said Israel "has every right in the world to defend itself" from attacks by Hamas militants in Gaza.
The State Department said Kerry would leave early today for Egypt, where he will join diplomatic efforts to resume a truce that had been agreed to in November 2012. President Barack Obama, in a telephone call Sunday, told Netanyahu that Kerry was going to the Mideast and condemned Hamas' attacks, according to a White House statement.
Cairo has offered a cease-fire plan that is backed by the U.S. and Israel. But Hamas has rejected the Egyptian plan and is relying on governments in Qatar and Turkey for an alternative proposal. Qatar and Turkey have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is also linked to Hamas but banned in Egypt.
Qatar is seen as more sympathetic to Hamas.
Qatari Foreign Minister Khalid al-Attiya said after a meeting with Ban that it is not important which country achieves the terms of a cease-fire so long as justice is achieved.
"We condemn the acts of aggression that Israel has carried out against the Palestinian people, and most recently the massacre of Shijaiyah today in which most of those killed were children," said al-Attiya.
In Paris, pro-Palestinian youths defying a ban on a protest against Israel's Gaza offensive clashed with police Sunday, setting fire to cars, pillaging stores and attacking two synagogues in the suburbs.
Police, backed by a helicopter overhead, responded with tear gas and shots from nonlethal guns during hours of unrest in the northern suburb of Sarcelles, home to a large Jewish community.
The unrest was the second time in two days that pro-Palestinian demonstrations in France turned violent.
The demonstration, like the one in Paris on Saturday, had been banned to ensure peace.
Information for this article was contributed by Karin Laub, Tia Goldenberg, Ian Deitch, Yousur Alhlou, Ibrahim Barzak, Dalton Bennett, Abdullah Rebhy, Aya Batrawy, Milos Krivokapic, Elaine Ganley, Thibault Camus, Lara Jakes, Tami Abdollah and Sarah Rankin of The Associated Press and by Anne Barnard, Isabel Kershner, Fares Akram, Tyler Hicks, Michael R. Gordon, Brian Knowlton and Somini Sengupta of The New York Times.
A Section on 07/21/2014