Gaza City - The number of casualties from Israel's three- week-long offensive against militants in the Gaza Strip was "extremely shocking," the United Nations humanitarian chief John Holmes said Thursday as he began a five-day fact-finding mission in the battered salient. Holmes said the most immediate concerns were to provide clean water, electricity, sanitation and shelter for those who lost their homes in the Israeli air strikes or in the intensive fighting once Israeli ground troops entered the salient.
He said Gaza's border crossings would have to be opened to allow humanitarian aid to reach the enclave.
Israel's crossings to the Strip had been closed intermittently before the operation, with Jerusalem carrying out a blockade on the salient after Hamas, which does not recognise the Jewish state, seized control there.
Hamas has demanded the crossings remain open permanently.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told her European Union counterparts Wednesday that her government is willing to reopen border crossings into the Gaza Strip for humanitarian reasons but insisted that weapons smuggling to Hamas must be halted.
"In order to help in answering the humanitarian need in the Gaza Strip, we are willing to cooperate in this as far as it is needed," Livni told reporters after a meeting with EU foreign ministers in Brussels
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, meanwhile, said he hoped the calm which has by and large reigned since the Israel and then the militant organization each declared a ceasefire Sunday, would remain, but warned against complacency.
"I hope the quiet will continue for a long time, (but) we live in a severely uncertain region, we have neighbours whose responses can't be anticipated," he said during as visit to the Israeli town of Sderot, opposite the Gaza Strip border.
A further indication that the ceasefire was still volatile came Thursday morning, when Israel Navy gunboats opened fire at Palestinian fishing boats off the coast of Gaza, causing no fatalities but sending them scurrying back to shore.
Palestinians said five people were injured by the Israeli gunfire.
An Israeli military spokesman in Tel Aviv said the Israeli ships fired "warning shots" when they noticed the Palestinian boats had sailed too far from shore.
He said the naval blockade of the Gaza Strip instituted by Israel was still in force, forcing the Palestinian fishing boats to sail closer to the shore.
Israel launched its Operation Cats Lead against Gaza militants on December 27, following massive rocket barrages from the salient on southern Israeli towns and villages.
The assault kicked off with a week of intense air raids on the Gaza Strip, after which,. on the evening of January 3, ground troops and armour rolled into the enclave, sparking more heavy fighting.
Officials at the Hamas-controlled health ministry in the Strip said over 1,400 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli offensive, but a leading Palestinian human rights organization put the figure at nearly 1,300, around 70 per cent of whom were civilians.
Three more Gazans died Thursday of wounds sustained during the fighting.
Thirteen Israelis - 10 soldieres and three civilians - were also killed during the offensive.
