Displaced Palestinians pass time at a U.N school where they now live, in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, on Thursday, July 31, 2014. Israeli attacks in the strip continued Thursday, with witnesses saying... (Associated Press) 
 
 JERUSALEM (AP) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that Israel will destroy the Hamas tunnel network in the Gaza Strip "with or without a cease-fire," as the military called up another 16,000 reservists to pursue its campaign in the densely-populated territory. 
 
 Netanyahu's vow came as international efforts to end the 23-day-old conflict seemed to sputter despite concern over the mounting death toll, with more than 1,300 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and more than 50 Israelis, almost all of them soldiers, killed since July 8. 
 
 "We have neutralized dozens of terror tunnels and we are committed to complete this mission, with or without a cease-fire," Netanyahu said. "Therefore I will not agree to any offer that does not allow the military to complete this important mission for the security of the people of Israel." 
 
 An initial Israeli aerial campaign against Hamas was widened into a ground offensive on July 17. Since then the campaign has concentrated on destroying more than 30 cross-border tunnels that militants have constructed to carry out attacks on Israeli territory. 
 
 Israel says that most of the 32 tunnels it has uncovered have now been demolished and that getting rid of the remainder will take no more than a few days. 
 
 The new reserve call-up follows another day of heavy fighting, in which tank shells struck a U.N. school where Palestinians were sheltering and an airstrike tore through a crowded Gaza shopping area. At least 116 Palestinians and three Israeli soldiers were killed Wednesday. 
 
 Speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not permitted to discuss the matter with the press, an Israeli defense official said the purpose of the latest call-up was to provide relief for troops currently on the Gaza firing line. However, Israeli officials have also said they do not rule out broadening operations in the coming days. 
 
 Fifty-six Israeli soldiers and three civilians on the Israeli side have been killed since the offensive began, as Palestinians have fired hundreds of rockets at Israel -- some reaching major cities -- and carried out attacks through tunnels beneath the heavily guarded frontier. 
 
 Israel has called up a total of 86,000 reserves during the Gaza war, which it launched to try to end rocket fire from Hamas and other armed groups. 
 
 Israeli attacks in the strip continued Thursday, with witnesses saying that munitions struck the Omar Ibn al-Khatab mosque next to a U.N. school in the northern town of Beit Lahiya. Israeli fire near another U.N. school in Gaza killed more than a dozen people the day before, drawing international condemnation. 
 
 The strike in Beit Lahiya early Thursday damaged water tanks on the roof of a building near the mosque, sending shrapnel flying into the adjacent school compound, where dozens of Palestinians displaced by the fighting had taken shelter. 
 
 "The shrapnel from the strike on the mosque hit people who were in the street and at the entrance of the school," said Sami Salebi, an area resident. 
 
 Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra said at least 15 people were wounded, with three of them in critical condition. 
 
 Kifah Rafati, 40, was being treated for shrapnel injuries at the nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital. She said she and her six children had been sleeping in a classroom facing the mosque when the explosion went off. "There is no safety anywhere," she said. 
 
 On Wednesday Israeli tank shells struck a U.N. school in the Jebaliya refugee camp where some 3,300 Gazans had crammed in to seek refuge from the fighting, killing at least 17 people. The military said it was responding to mortar fire coming from the area of the school. 
 
 But Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the deadly school shelling "outrageous" and "unjustifiable," and demanded an immediate humanitarian cease-fire. 
 
 "Nothing is more shameful than attacking sleeping children," the U.N. chief said. 
 
 The White House also criticized the shelling of the U.N. school in Jebaliya. 
 
 "We are extremely concerned that thousands of internally displaced Palestinians who have been called on by the Israeli military to evacuate their homes are not safe in U.N. designated shelters in Gaza," said Bernadette Meehan, a spokeswoman for the White House's National Security Council. 
 
 Later on Wednesday, an Israeli airstrike hit a crowded shopping area in the Shijaiyah district in Gaza City, killing at least 16 people, including Palestinian video journalist Rami Rayan, who was wearing a press vest at the time, and wounding more than 200 people, al-Kidra said. 
 
 Thursday marked a third day of particularly heavy Israeli air and artillery attacks, at a time when Egyptian cease-fire efforts appeared to have stalled. Israeli media said late Wednesday that Israel's Security Cabinet decided to press forward with the operation. 
 
 Egyptian officials, meanwhile, met with an Israeli envoy about Israel's conditions for a cease-fire, including disarming Hamas, according to a high-ranking Egyptian security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to discuss the delicate diplomatic efforts. 
 
 Hamas has said it will only halt fire once it receives guarantees that a Gaza border blockade by Israel and Egypt -- tightened after the Islamic militant group seized power in Gaza in 2007 -- will be lifted. 
 
 Israel says it wants to decimate Hamas' rocket-launching capability, diminish its weapons arsenal and demolish the tunnels. It has launched more than 4,000 strikes against Hamas-linked targets, including rocket launchers and mosques where it says weapons were being stored. 
 
 Israeli strikes have also hit dozens of homes. Mahmoud Abu Rahma of the Palestinian human rights group Al Mezan said nearly half of the Palestinians killed so far died in their homes. 
 
 Israeli officials have said Hamas uses Gaza's civilians as human shields by firing rockets from crowded neighborhoods. Palestinian militants have fired more than 2,600 rockets at Israel over the past three weeks. 
 
 However, Pierre Kraehenbuehl, chief of the U.N. aid agency for Palestinian refugees, said Israel must try harder to ensure that civilians are not hurt, especially in Gaza, where 1.7 million people are squeezed into a small coastal territory. His agency has opened 80 of its schools to more than 200,000 Palestinians fleeing the violence. 
 
 "What maybe the world forgets ... is that the people of Gaza have nowhere to go," he said. "So when the fighting starts and they move, it is not as if they can cross a border to somewhere." 
 
 ___ 
 
 Barzak reported from Gaza City, Gaza Strip. ||||| JERUSALEM/GAZA Israel will go on fighting Hamas in the Gaza Strip even after the army completes its core mission of destroying the cross-border tunnels used by Palestinian militants to attack its territory, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday. 
 
 As Israeli television showed live footage of some tanks withdrawing from Gaza in an apparent winding down of the 25-day campaign, Netanyahu said Hamas would pay an "intolerable price" if it continued to attack Israel. 
 
 Israel began its air and naval offensive against Gaza on July 8 following a surge of cross-border rocket salvoes by Hamas and other guerrillas, later escalating into ground incursions. 
 
 Shelling exchanges continued earlier on Saturday, pushing the Gaza death toll given by Palestinian officials up to 1,675, most of them civilians. Israel has confirmed that 63 soldiers have died in combat, while Palestinian shelling has also killed three civilians in Israel. 
 
 Netanyahu's comments came as Israel signaled it was taking action to withdraw on its own terms, saying it would not attend talks in Cairo this weekend aimed at achieving a new truce. 
 
 In some areas of Gaza, witnesses saw Israeli tanks pulling back towards the border, while the Israeli military gave Palestinians who had fled one town the all-clear to return. 
 
 Israel's main goal in its incursion into Gaza last month was to destroy Hamas's network of tunnels, and the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) said they were close to achieving that. 
 
 More than 30 tunnels and dozens of access shafts have been unearthed and were being blown up, the military said. 
 
 "Our understanding is that our objectives, most importantly the destruction of the tunnels, are close to completion," a military spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner, said. 
 
 Netanyahu said in a televised speech that military action would continue even after that goal is achieved. 
 
 "After completing the anti-tunnel operation, the IDF will act and continue to act, in accordance with our security needs and only according to our defense needs, until we achieve our objective of restoring security to you, Israel's citizens," he said. 
 
 "PAY FOR EVERY MINUTE" 
 
 Hamas said it was absurd for Israel to claim to have destroyed all the tunnels. "Netanyahu will pay for every minute he spends carrying out more aggression against our people," a spokesman said. 
 
 Several ceasefires between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist movement that dominates the Gaza Strip, have failed to take hold or quickly collapsed, most recently on Friday after two Israeli soldiers were killed and a third went missing in an ambush. 
 
 Israel accused Hamas of seizing Second-Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, and the United States blamed the group for a "barbaric" breach of the truce. The United Nations was more guarded in its censure of Hamas but demanded Goldin's release. 
 
 Israeli forces have been searching for Goldin in southern Gaza, but his family expressed alarm at reports of an Israeli pull-out. 
 
 "I demand that the State of Israel not leave Gaza until it brings my son home," Goldin's mother, Hedva, told reporters. 
 
 Hamas said it believed its gunmen had struck before Friday's ceasefire began and that if they captured Goldin, he probably died with his captors in heavy Israeli barrages that followed. 
 
 In Cairo, a Palestinian delegation arrived for new truce talks, which would include Hamas's demand Egypt ease movement across its border with blockaded Gaza. Turning its back on those negotiations, Israel said it would not send envoys as scheduled. 
 
 "They (Hamas) cannot be trusted to keep their word. They cannot stop (firing) because, for them, a ceasefire at this stage, whether by arrangement or not by arrangement, would mean acknowledging the worst possible defeat," Deputy Foreign Minister Tzachi Hanegbi told Israel's Channel Two TV. 
 
 Hamas, its guerrillas massively outgunned by a Jewish state it considers an eternal enemy, said it would prevail. 
 
 Any unilateral pullout by Israel would mean "it has failed to achieve any of its goals and would be a clear defeat for the occupation army and for its leaders," Hamas's bloc in the Palestinian parliament said in a statement. "Gaza resisted, endured and will achieve victory." 
 
 "EXPLOSIONS EVERYWHERE" 
 
 Israel said Palestinians on Saturday launched 74 rockets across the border, most of which fell harmlessly wide while seven were shot down by its Iron Dome interceptor, including over Tel Aviv. 
 
 Crowded Gazan towns close to the Israeli border have seen devastating clashes and the flight of tens of thousands of Palestinians as tanks and troops swept in to confront dug-in guerrillas. 
 
 The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights said 520,000 people had been displaced by the fighting - more than a quarter of Gaza's population. 
 
 Israel said on Saturday evacuees from Beit Lahiya, a northern town of 70,000 residents, could return. But fear still gripped the townspeople. 
 
 "No one has told us to go back," said Talab Manna, a 30-year-old father of seven camped out at a U.N.-run school serving as a refugee haven. "We can't risk going back and being bombed by the Israeli forces." 
 
 Quoting a senior military officer, Israel Radio said the condition of the missing soldier was not known. It said Goldin was last seen next to the two troops killed by a Hamas suicide bomber - suggesting he may not have survived and his captors had a corpse. 
 
 Hamas had long threatened to capture Israelis for a prisoner swap. In 2011, Israel released more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Gilad Shalit, a soldier snatched by Hamas five years earlier. Israel has twice freed prisoners for the bodies of soldiers held by Lebanon's Hezbollah militia. 
 
 The Rafah clash in which Goldin was reported to have been captured triggered Israeli shelling from the middle of Friday morning that killed 150 Palestinians. By afternoon, Israel declared an end to the truce - which was meant to have lasted 72 hours. 
 
 Rafah residents said they had received recorded telephone warnings from Israel to stay indoors during a barrage that wreaked widespread ruin. 
 
 "It was like an action movie - explosions everywhere, cars flying up in flames, people crushed under houses that were bombed," local man Bassim Abed told Reuters. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Dan Williams and Ori Lewis in Jerusalem, Mostafa Hashem and Oliver Holmes in Cairo; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
– Benjamin Netanyahu today vowed to destroy Hamas' tunnels at all costs, even as Israel called up an additional 16,000 reservists—bringing the total so far to 86,000 troops. "We are determined to complete this mission with or without a ceasefire," he said of the tunnels' destruction, as per Haaretz. "Therefore I will not agree to any offer that does not allow the military to complete this important mission for the security of the people of Israel." He also issued a get-in-line message to two ministers who have been critical of his actions against Hamas, saying "beware of what you're doing." Netanyahu's statement vis a vis the tunnels comes as ceasefire efforts are sputtering anyway, notes the AP, and on the heels of the worst day of casualties thus far in Gaza.