"Our Gaza field office was struck with three white phosphorous shells." UNRWA coordinator Sébastien Trives in Gaza, 01/15/09, 11:00 am (GMT+1).

"I have conveyed my strong protest and outrage and demanded a full explanation from the defence minister and foreign minister," Ban told reporters in Tel Aviv.
   
Ban said Defence Minister Ehud Barak had assured him the incident had been "a grave mistake" which was being taken "very seriously."

In a separate incident, two cameramen were wounded when an Israeli strike hit a building in Gaza City housing several international and Arab media outlets, witnesses said.
   
The two cameramen worked for Abu Dhabi television, officials told AFP.
   
The Al-Shuruq tower, located in the Rimal neighbourhood in the centre of Gaza City, houses several media outlets, including the Reuters news agency and television stations Fox, Sky and Al-Arabiya.

Israeli tanks push deeper into Gaza's cities

Israeli tanks began moving ever deeper into Gaza cities in the early morning hours, barrelling into several neighbourhoods of the enclave's capital and into a major city in the south, witnesses and correspondents said.
   
The sound of tank shells ripped through the air like thunderclaps and thick black smoke rose into the air from the neighbourhoods of Tal al-Hawa, Zeitun and Shujaiyeh in Gaza City, the coastal strip's main urban hub, they said.
   
Battles raged in the northern town of Jabaliya and ground troops backed by dozens of tanks lunged at least one kilometre (less than a mile) into the southern town of Khan Yunis.
   
Dozens of terrified civilians loaded with babies, toddlers and children fled to the Al-Quds hospital in Tal Al-Hawa, an outlying area in the southwest of Gaza City, that has been the site of repeated Israeli ground incursions over the past week.
   
The sound of tank shells, air strikes, artillery, helicopter gunships and automatic gunfire mixed into a general cacophony as the battles unfolded less than 300 metres (yards) from the hospital.
   
Armed Hamas fighters dressed in blue and black uniforms, one of them carrying the green flag of his Islamist movement, ran down a street 100 metres from the hospital, firing Kalashnikov rifles.
   
Inside the hospital residents of the neighbourhood huddled where they could. Mothers tried to console their crying children and to make them laugh.
   
"I brought the children to the hospital because they were scared at home, but here they are even more terrified," said Hossein, 40, who came with his wife and five children shortly after the tanks rolled in after dawn.
   
"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."
   
Nearby Bashar Murad, a doctor and the head of the ambulance services for the Red Crescent, waited helplessly.
   
"I have three dead bodies at 500 metres, but I can't get to them," he said. "I have numerous wounded less than a kilometre away, but I can't move without authorisation," Murad said.
   
Before the ambulances can move, the International Committee of the Red Cross must call the Israeli army and receive a green light to move in a certain area, he said.
   
"It's hard for me to stay here while people may be dying. But I don't have a choice."