Trapped by Israeli troops for six days in one room 33 Gazans seek Red Cross intervention

A family trapped by Israeli forces in for six days one room of their home in the Al-Mughrqa area, south of Gaza City, phoned Ma'an on Friday seeking urgent rescue.

The Al-Wahidi family is appealing to the Red Cross, human rights organizations, or any relevant organization, to intervene and rescue them.

The Free Gaza Movement issued a press release on Thursday announcing that peace activists will be heading to Gaza via an emergency ship in an attempt to deliver humanitarian supplies to the residents of the Gaza Strip.

The movement added that the time and date of the trip will be announced soon, and that the boat will sail from Cyprus to the regional waters in Gaza without approaching Israeli controlled regional waters (although this will not stop the Israeli Navy from potentially attacking and intercepting them).

The movement said that the ongoing Israeli offensive and the killing of hundreds of civilians, including women and children, and the thousands of wounded residents, prove that Israel is ongoing with targeting civilians, while the international community remains unable to oblige Israel to respect the international human rights treaties and the Fourth Geneva Conventions.

The United Nations said Friday that the number of Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip reached 799 after the bodies of 50 children were found buried under the rubble.

Witnesses report that during last weekend the Israeli military bombed a house in Gaza where soldiers had rounded up 110 Palestinians, killing 30 people. At least 50 bodies were found, along with children, under the rubble.

Witnesses in Gaza and Israeli military sources said today that Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip and projectile launches from the armed Palestinian resistance continued early Friday despite the UN Security Council finally passing a resolution calling for an immediate halt. The Israeli Cabinet is meeting to decide whether to abide the resolution or to move on to "Phase Three" of the operation against the Gaza Strip. A Palestinian spokesperson said the resolution "fell short of the aspirations of the Palestinian people."

The Samouni family knew they were in danger. They had been calling the Red Cross for two days, they said, begging to be taken out of Zeitoun, a poor area in eastern Gaza City that is considered a stronghold of Hamas.

No rescuers came. Instead, Israeli soldiers entered their building late Sunday night and told them to evacuate to another building. They did. But at 6 a.m. on Monday, when a missile fired by an Israeli warplane struck the relatives' house in which they had taken shelter, there was nowhere to run.

Eleven members of the extended Samouni family were killed and 26 wounded, according to witnesses and hospital officials, with five children age 4 and under among the dead.

Hundreds of members of the clan flooded in to Shifa Hospital, all from Zeitoun, many in shock. Masouda al-Samouni, 20, lost her mother-in-law, her husband and her 10-month-old son. She said she had been preparing food for the baby when the missile struck. "He died hungry," she said.

'We are very violent', says Israeli commander

Criticism by international watchdog groups over the increasing death toll in Gaza mounted this week as the first legal actions inside Israel were launched accusing the army of intentionally harming the enclave's civilian population.

The petitions - over attacks on medical personnel and the shelling of United Nations schools in Gaza - follow statements by senior Israeli commanders that they have been using heavy firepower to protect soldiers during their advance on built-up areas. "We are very violent," one told Israeli media.

There is also growing evidence that Israeli forces have been firing phosphorus shells over densely populated areas in a move that risks violating international law by inflicting burns on civilians.

The Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, meanwhile, called the events in Gaza a "new Nakba", referring to the catastrophe that dispossessed the Palestinians in 1948. The Palestinian Authority revealed that it was planning to seek the prosecution of Israel's leaders for war crimes in the international courts.