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More than 1,050 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip as Israeli ground forces pushed deeper into densely-populated urban areas.
Thousands of civilians fled their homes on Thursday as tank shells and missiles exploded causing black smoke to rise above the neighborhoods of Tal al-Hawa, Zeitoun and Shujaiyeh in Gaza City.
Battles raged in the northern town of Jabaliya and Israeli ground troops backed by dozens of tanks pushed at least 1km into the southern town of Khan Yunis.
"There has been a constant barrage of shelling, as far as we can tell, and the sky is filled with black smoke and the smell of detonations," Sami Abdel-Shafi, a Gaza City resident, told Al Jazeera.
"The civilian population here continues to be hammered by this massive war and they are simply in disbelief that this is continuing despite the UN call for an immediate and complete ceasefire."
Israeli aircraft struck about 70 locations overnight, including a mosque in southern Gaza, the military said.
UN compound hit
A UN compound in Gaza City also came under artillery fire on Thursday.
"We are in this area that has come under artillery bombardment, this is one of the densely-populated areas of the city itself, and the shrapnel has been flying around us all morning," John Ging, director of UN operations, said.
"They have lifted their fire and moved it forward a couple of kilometers ... now they are moving the shelling into the city itself."
Al Jazeera's Ayman Mohyeldin, reporting from Gaza City, said that the Israeli shelling was the closest to the centre of the city that it had been during the Israeli offensive.
"There have, no doubt, been a series of air strikes that have destroyed so many of the buildings here in the heart of Gaza City, but this is the first time we have seen this kind of shelling," he said.
"We are getting some very horrific accounts from people trapped in buildings unable to leave."
Mays al-Khatib, a Gaza resident, told Al Jazeera: "The shelling is continuous since last night, we are here in this place, we are around 500 families here under bombardment."
"Many children are here, the entire tower collapsed ... We are being killed, 300 persons just killed in front of our eyes when a tower collapsed. Please stop this war," she said before he telephone was cut off.
Frightened civilians
Some frightened civilians gathered in the Al-Quds hospital in Tal al-Hawa on the southwestern outskirts of Gaza City.
"I brought the children to the hospital because they were scared at home, but here they are even more terrified," Hossein, who took his wife and five children to the hospital shortly after the tanks rolled in after dawn, said.
"The house next door was completely destroyed in the fighting so we had to get out of there. We can't take this any longer. Look at my children, they're trembling."
Israel also hit smuggling tunnels from Egypt into the southern Rafah area of Gaza.
"They used bombs that went deep into the tunnels and shook the whole Rafah refugee camp. The land trembled beneath our feet," Bassam Abdallah, a local Palestinian cameraman, said.
The tunnels are used to bring in basic supplies for the territory which has been suffering under an Israeli blockade.
At least 1,054 Palestinians have been killed since Israel began its assault on the Gaza Strip on December 27, medics said.
More than 4,800 people have been injured in the violence.
Aid boat blocked
However, the two sides appeared to be inching closer towards a ceasefire deal on Thursday.
Amos Gilad, a senior Israeli envoy, was expected to meet Egyptian mediators in Cairo after a Hamas delegation gave its view on the proposed agreement.
Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, was also trying to halt the fighting as he travelled to Tel Aviv and Ramallah to met Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
Meanwhile, a Greek-flagged vessel trying to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip with medical aid for the Palestinians was turned back to Cyprus by an Israeli naval vessel.
Huwaida Arraf, an organizer with the US-based Free Gaza Movement, said that the boat was intercepted about 100 miles northeast of Gaza.
"They got very close and they threatened that if we continued they would open fire on us," she told the Reuters news agency.
"They surrounded us with about four warships making it very difficult to navigate. They said they would use all means to keep us out of Gaza."
PHOTO CAPTION
Smoke is seen during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2009.
Al-Jazeera
