Tuesday 22 July 2014 16.28 The United Nations said Palestinian civilians in densely-populated Gaza have no place to hide from Israel's military offensive and children are paying the heaviest price.
"There is literally no safe place for civilians," Jens Laerke, spokesman of the UN Office for Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA), told a news briefing in Geneva.
More than 600 people have been killed in Gaza since the offensive began.
The priority for aid agencies was protecting civilians and evacuating and treating the wounded, Mr Laerke said.
Nearly 500 homes have been destroyed by Israeli air strikes and 100,000 people have sought shelter in schools of the UN Relief and Works Agency, where they need food, water and mattresses, he said.
Israel began air strikes on the coastal strip on 8 July,saying it wanted to halt missile fire out of Gaza by Hamas militants, and launched a ground offensive last Thursday.
Israel pounded targets across Gaza, dashing hopes of a pause in the fighting. Hamas rejected an Egyptian ceasefire proposal last week.
Thirty Israelis, 28 of them soldiers, have died.
The army said that a soldier who Hamas militants claimed they had kidnapped is dead and his body remains unaccounted for.
Sparking widespread celebrations in Gaza, Hamas's armed wing announced on Sunday that it had captured a soldier in that day's clashes.
It displayed a photo ID and army serial number of the man, but did not show any image of him in their hands.
The Israeli military believes it was impossible for anyone to have survived the hit on the army troops.
US Secretary of State John Kerry today discussed proposals for a Gaza ceasefire with Egypt, as both sides voiced guarded hopes of ending the bloodshed.
Mr Kerry held talks in Cairo with UN chief Ban Ki-moon, who has also come to the Egyptian capital to push for a truce.
Mr Kerry met the Egyptian leadership today, including President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the former army chief who overthrew the Islamist goverment last year and cracked down on its supporters.
Mr Ban has urged Israel and the Palestinians to stop the bloodshed in Gaza as he sought to broker an end to a fortnight of deadly violence.
Speaking at a news conference after arriving in Tel Aviv, Ban described Hamas rocket fire on Israel as "shocking," saying it must "stop immediately".
"My message to Israelis and Palestinians is the same: Stop fighting, start talking and take on the root causes of the conflict so that we are not at the same situation in the next six months or a year," he said.
The secretary-general said he had seen photographic and video evidence of Palestinian rocket fire on Israel, describing it as "quite shocking" and saying all countries had an "international obligation to protect" their citizens.
"The UN position is clear: we condemn strongly rocket attacks. These must stop immediately," he said.
But Israel must exercise "maximum restraint."
He urged the Jewish state to take a hard look at some of the root causes of the violence.
US airline Delta is indefinitely suspending flights between the United States and Israel, citing security concerns.
In a statement, the carrier said it had diverted a flight bound for Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport to Paris after "reports of a rocket or associated debris near the airport in Tel Aviv."
Majority killed and injured are children - UNICEF
The overwhelming majority of people killed so far in the conflict are Palestinians, including 121 Gaza children under age 18 who make up one-third of the total civilian casualties, Juliette Touma of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said.
More than 900 Palestinian children are also reported to have been injured, according to UNICEF.
"According to an assessment by aid workers on ground at least 107,000 children need psycho-social support for the trauma they are experiencing such as death, injury or loss of their homes," Mr Laerke said.
More than 1.2 million people in Gaza have no water or only limited access to water as power networks have been damaged or lack fuel for generators, he said.
"In addition, we do have reports of sewage flooding which is a threat to public health," he said.
The World Food Programme has distributed emergency food rations and food vouchers to more than 90,000 people so far during the conflict, spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said.
"Ready to eat food stocks are running low in Gaza given the conflict has lasted two weeks and the needs are increasing," she said.
Supplies will be bought locally and also airlifted from Dubai.
The World Health Organisation said that 18 health facilities in Gaza have been damaged, including three hospitals.
"There are critical concerns with hospital supplies, as both medicines and medical disposables are in serious shortage, both in ministry of health and ngo hospitals, due to the large number of casualties and serious shortages even before the escalation of violence," WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib said.
Earlier, Palestinian militants in Gaza said they had agreed to a five-hour ceasefire to allow Gazan residents to leave their homes and seek vital supplies, and accused Israel of rejecting the proposal. Israeli officials did not comment.
Violence spread to the nearby West Bank, where medics said soldiers shot dead a Palestinian man while dispersing stone-throwing protesters.
A Palestinian shot and seriously wounded an Israeli in the Nablus area today.
Dispatched by US President Barack Obama to the Middle East to seek a ceasefire, Mr Kerry held talks today in Cairo with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri.
Egypt was key to securing an end to a previous bout of Gaza fighting in 2012, but the country's new leadership is openly hostile to Hamas, potentially complicating the negotiations.
Israel has signalled it is not in a hurry to achieve a truce before reaching its goal of crippling Hamas's militant infrastructure, including rocket arsenals and networks of tunnels threatening Israelis living along the Gaza frontier.
Hamas has also said it will not cease hostilities until its demands are met.
They include that Israel and Egypt lift their blockade of Gaza and its 1.8 million people, and that Israel release several hundred Palestinians detained during a search last month for three Jewish teenagers later found dead.
Israel blamed the killings on Hamas.
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