Israel rains fire on Gaza | Opinion: Michael Lerner | Brown calls for ceasefire | Europe split on response | Comment: James Bone | Doctors overwhelmed | Analysis: Colonel Lior Lotan | Leading article

Israeli tanks and infantry battalions swept up to the edges of Gaza City yesterday, battling Hamas fighters and sealing off the bomb-scarred capital city from the rest of the coastal territory.

With the civilian death toll rising by the hour and diplomatic efforts to halt the fighting making no headway, the head of the UN refugee agency called the situation a catastrophe. Israel made clear that it was not about to heed calls for a swift ceasefire. It insisted that it needed to smash Hamas and destroy its weapons stockpile to ensure a lasting peace not just for its citizens, who had endured years of Palestinian rocket fire, but also for the people of Gaza themselves.

Ehud Barak, the Defence Minister and architect of the assault on Gaza, said that the operation would be “expanded and intensified” as was necessary. “War is not a picnic,” he said.

Hamas fired more rockets into southern Israel yesterday despite the army’s advance. With armoured columns pressing in from three different points on the northern end of the strip and from the centre, the territory was cut into three sections.

Israeli forces pushed all the way to the seashore just south of Gaza. They secured the hilly area where the Jewish settlement and Israeli army base of Netzarim once stood before the Gaza pullout ordered by Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli leader, who suffered a debilitating stroke exactly three years ago.

With the north sealed off and heavy fighting under way between Israeli and Hamas forces, more Israeli tanks moved into the southern area of the strip, cutting off Rafah and its key smuggling tunnels under the Egyptian border. The incursion stopped the trickle of aid trucks that had been making their way to Gaza’s hospitals, depleted of medicines and fuel for their emergency generators.

“We have a catastrophe unfolding in Gaza for the civilian population,” John Ging, the head of the UN refugee agency in the Gaza Strip, said. “They’re in their houses, they’re not safe, they’re being killed and injured in very large numbers, and they have no end in sight.”

Many people were fleeing their homes after tank shells hit residential buildings as fighting moved closer to Gaza City. There was nowhere to go, however, with Israeli forces blocking the road south and moving in from the north and east, and gunships lobbing shells from the Mediterranean.

With thousands of troops flooding in from the elite Golani Brigade, the Givati Brigade – which carried out thousands of operations in Gaza before the 2005 disengagement – and the Engineering and Armoured Corps, Israel said that stage two of Operation Cast Lead was a success.

“We know what we are doing,” a soldier from the Golani Reconnaissance Unit told the Jerusalem Post. “Golani has been in Gaza before and we were successful. We expect the same results this time as well.”

Israeli forces did lose one soldier to a mortar attack, which together with buried mines were the greatest threat to the troops, military officials said. About 30 Israeli soldiers were wounded in the first day of fighting. Israel said that it had killed three senior Hamas commanders, including Mohammed Shaltoch, head of Hamas special forces in Rafah, and others in charge of rocket-launching squads.

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