Israeli war machines grind deep in reeling Gaza

[Liberal_in_LA]

Israeli war machines grind deep in reeling Gaza

Thu Jan 8, 2009 12:18pm EST

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsMaps/idUSTRE5075OA20090108

GAZA (Reuters) - The bodies stank because they lay too long where they died. Children were starving because they were left helpless by dead mothers. And the war in Gaza reeled to the end of a second week.

Inexorably, the civilian death toll mounted on Thursday as the Israeli army's fearsome array of high explosive weapons blew more of its Gaza targets to bits -- and sometimes missed.

One air strike targeted a group of Islamic Jihad fighters in the southern Gaza Strip but slammed into a street instead, killing two children, local medics reported.

A woman was sliced in two by a tank shell and her infant son obliterated.

Two fork-lift truck drivers in an aid convoy were killed by tank fire, the U.N. relief agency said. Two women were fatally struck by a missile in the courtyard of their house. Palestinian medics think it was fired from an unmanned drone.