Israel's Gaza offensive enters third week

The situation in the camp, home to some 104,000 refugees, remained tense, with sporadic gunfire from Israeli tanks sending the Palestinian population ducking for shelter.

Israeli army bulldozers continued to level citrus groves and houses in the northern sector of the camp.

A drive through the squalid streets of the densely populated camp, with Israeli drones circling ominously overhead, reveals a mass of humanity.

Donkey carts compete on the road with dented old Mercedes and newer Asian imports. Barefoot children play in the sandy pavements and rubbish-strewn gutters.

"Israel moved into Jabaliya and some people have been forced to fight back," said Dr Manar el-Farra, director of the camp's Al-Awdah hospital.

"We are expecting more casualties at any time," said Farra, dodging instinctively behind a pillar after a bullet whizzes past an open hospital window overlooking a working Israeli bulldozer and a tank just 100 yards away.

Farra has signed the death certificates of 26 people since Operation Days of Penitence was launched a fortnight ago in a bid to halt rocket attacks on southern Israel. Six of those fatalities were children.

"Injured casualties come in like burnt pieces of steak," he told AFP.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which is responsible for the camp, has only been able to deliver three convoys of humanitarian aid, with a fourth due on Tuesday.

Those convoys will feed around 9,000 people.

"The situation around the camp is extremely bad," said Lionel Brisson, director of UNRWA operations in Gaza. "We're doing less than expected because we cannot bring in supplies."

Brisson questioned the Israeli tactic of collective punishment.

"The regime of closures is one of strangulation," he said. "Israelis are invoking security reasons but it is affecting the whole population, and making people more desperate ... I'm not convinced it'll work.

"There is a general fatigue in the (Gaza) population. They want peace, to live in peace.