Israeli war machines grind deep in reeling Gaza

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) - The bodies stank because they lay too long where they died. Children were starving because they were left helpless by dead mothers. And the war in Gaza reeled to the end of a second week.

Inexorably, the civilian death toll mounted on Thursday as the Israeli army's fearsome array of high explosive weapons blew more of its Gaza targets to bits -- and sometimes missed.

One air strike targeted a group of Islamic Jihad fighters in the southern Gaza Strip but slammed into a street instead, killing two children, local medics reported.

A woman was sliced in two by a tank shell and her infant son obliterated.

Two fork-lift truck drivers in an aid convoy were killed by tank fire, the U.N. relief agency said. Two women were fatally struck by a missile in the courtyard of their house. Palestinian medics think it was fired from an unmanned drone.

In the midst of this thoroughly modern, push-button war were grim scenes familiar down through the history of human conflict.

"We have evacuated 90 people alive, but they had been trapped inside their houses, including many children," said Gaza ambulance driver Khaled, who went with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) into the Zeitoun neighborhood.

"They looked terrible. They have been living without water and without food for many long days," he said.

The ICRC had requested safe passage for ambulances to access the area since Saturday but got in only on Wednesday. Its team found four small children next to their dead mothers, too weak to stand. At least 12 corpses were lying on mattresses.

The ambulances could not get over earth walls piled up by Israeli army bulldozers to block enemy fighters, so donkey carts were brought in to evacuate the survivors.

Israel insists it is doing its utmost to avoid civilian casualties and ensure sufficient food and other humanitarian aid reaches Gaza. More than 700 Palestinians have died since its assault began 13 days ago.

Palestinian fighters have killed seven Israelis.

TERRIFIED OF TANKS

Throughout the night, people in eastern Khan Younis listened to the growl of advancing Israeli tanks, the crack of big guns, explosions, airstrikes, mortars and heavy machinegun fire.

Warplanes destroyed at least 25 houses on the border with Egypt, all evacuated in anticipation of strikes to collapse the smuggling tunnels of Gaza's Islamist Hamas rulers.