Meanwhile, Israeli forces pulled out of the center of the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya Thursday morning, after a three-day reoccupation.

During the incursion, the army had bulldozed large swathes of land, including hundreds of trees, and several roads and houses, witnesses told the BBC News Online.

The website cited the case of Palestinian poet and Beit Lahiya resident Omar Khalil Omar as an example of the suffering of local inhabitants.

Omar said his family property had been damaged and his mother's grave torn up.

“I don't know what threat my mother's grave could pose to the state of Israel,” Omar was quoted by the Associated Press as saying.

“They simply want to uproot us from here, whether we are alive or dead. But the grave will stay and we will stay,” he said.

Israeli army did not comment on the destruction, as international pressures continue to heap on Israel to end its offensive on Gaza, which killed 132 people, of whom a quarter is children, and left many people displaced after 120 houses were demolished by the invading soldiers.

Israel is failing in its duty to avoid innocent civilian casualties, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said.

Straw said in a statement released by the Foreign Office Wednesday, October 13, that the Israeli government was also failing to meet its legal obligation to ensure responses to the threats were proportionate.

The minister said he recognised the operation was in response to Qassam rocket attacks but it had killed many people, including many children.

“Israel has an obligation under international law to ensure that its response to terrorism is proportionate to the threat it faces, as well as a duty to avoid innocent civilian casualties and humanitarian suffering,” Straw said in the statement.

“It is not meeting those obligations,” he added.

The foreign secretary was particularly worried by the “tragic case” of Iman Al-Hams, the Palestinian schoolgirl who was shot 20 times on her way to school.

Iman was left lying in a pool of blood because ambulances had been denied access.

Straw said he was concerned aid agencies, including an arm of the United Nations, were having problems delivering humanitarian supplies to Gaza and the West Bank.

“Any blockages in these supplies will only worsen the already desperate living conditions of many of the people of Gaza,” he added.

Also, a senior Israeli army officer warned that the Israeli military operation Days of Penitence in northern Gaza has exhausted itself and it would turn counterproductive if it continues for too long.

“The operation has exhausted itself, and continuing it is liable only to lead to complications,” the officer told the Maariv daily.

“Every additional day that passes makes the humanitarian situation in the northern Gaza Strip worse,” he was quoted by Agence France-Presse (AFP) as saying.