GAZA - Israeli tank shells killed at least 40 Palestinians on Tuesday at a U.N. school where civilians had taken shelter, medical officials said, in carnage likely to boost international pressure on Israel to halt a Gaza offensive.
A Palestinian boy, who fled his house with his family during Israel's offensive, stands at a United Nations school in Gaza January 6, 2009. (Suhaib Salem/Reuters)People cut down by shrapnel lay in pools of blood on the street. Witnesses said two Israeli tanks shells exploded outside the school, killing at least 40 civilians — Palestinians who had taken refuge there and residents of nearby buildings.
"I am not familiar with the news," Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said, asked by reporters about incident.
"Unfortunately, (Hamas fighters) are hiding amongst civilians," she said, adding that Israel was trying to avoid civilian casualties.
In a separate incident earlier in the day, three Palestinians were killed in an air strike on another school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
The deaths in Gaza, home to 1.5 million people, raised to 75 the number of Palestinian civilians killed on Tuesday alone, according to medical officials.
The spike in civilian casualties could prove to be a turning point in Israel's "Operation Cast Lead," launched on December 19 with the declared aim of removing the Hamas rocket threat.
The killing of dozens of unarmed Lebanese in Israel's bombing in the village of Qana in the 2006 Lebanon war drained foreign support for its campaign against Hezbollah guerrillas. Israel said it had not known civilians were in the area.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States would like to seen "an immediate ceasefire that is durable, sustainable and not time-limited."
International efforts already under way to end the fighting have focused on securing a truce deal that would meet Israel's demand that Hamas, an Islamist group in charge of the Gaza Strip, could not rearm once hostilities end.
"If there is an end to terror, an end to the smuggling of ammunition from Sinai to Gaza, the Israeli fighting will stop," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said, referring to rockets and other weaponry Hamas obtains through tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border.
In fighting on Tuesday, Israeli forces pushed into the southern town of Khan Younis and battled Hamas militants on the outskirts of the city of Gaza. Palestinian medical officials said four militants were killed.
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip, at least 629 Palestinians have been killed and more than 2,700 wounded since Israel began its offensive.
Ten Israelis, including three civilians hit by rocket fire, have been killed in the conflict. At least five rockets landed in Israel on Tuesday, including one that hit the town of Gadera, 28 km (17 miles) from Tel Aviv. A three-year-old girl was wounded.
*****
Those U.S. politicians that cater to the Israel demands have complicit5y in these atrocities. And by the same token, all U.S. citizens share part of the blame.
The Israel lobbies in the United States are so powerful that no politicians can oppose these brutal and deadly acts without being targeted for defeat and without being called anti-Semitic. So powerful are these groups that Americans are fed a daily barrage of support by media people and politician pundits, willing to subvert national interests for their own greed and self-interests.
Americans will continue to pay heavily for supplying Israel with the military weapons used to kill civilians in Gaza, in Lebanon, and in Palestine and for its brutal acts.
Here are some facts that Americans should consider, presented by a former airline captain who lived and worked in the Middle East many years ago, at a time when Arabs and Iranians were friends of America:



