strike that hit a fruit and vegetable market near Gaza City,
Palestinian officials say.
Hundreds of people were shopping in the market in Shejaiya, a
spokesman for the Gaza health ministry said.
The attack came during a four-hour truce called by the Israeli
military. Hamas, which controls Gaza, had rejected the truce as
meaningless.
Meanwhile, Israel said three more of its soldiers had been killed in Gaza.
Palestinian doctors also said that another Israeli air strike after
the partial humanitarian ceasefire was announced had killed seven
people in Khan Younis.
Earlier, the UN said Israel had attacked a UN-run school housing
refugees in Gaza, despite warnings that civilians were there. Fifteen
people were killed and dozens hurt.
The White House condemned the attack and said it was "extremely
concerned" that Palestinians were not safe at shelters despite being
told to evacuate their homes by Israel's army.
More than 1,300 Palestinians and 58 Israelis have now died in the
conflict. Most of the Palestinian deaths have been of civilians.
Fifty-six Israeli soldiers have been killed along with two civilians.
A Thai worker in Israel has also died.
The Israeli military said that the three soldiers killed on Wednesday
died in a booby-trapped building.
'Media exploitation'
Correspondents say many people in Gaza were unaware the partial
ceasefire had been called.
Witnesses at the scene of the market strike in Shejaiya spoke of smoke
billowing over the site, with ambulances racing victims to hospital.
A journalist who worked for a local news agency was reported to have
been killed.
One witness, Salim Qadoum, told Associated Press: "The area now is
like a bloodbath, everyone is wounded or killed. People lost their
limbs and were screaming for help. It's a massacre."
The Palestinian al-Aqsa satellite TV channel quoted Hamas spokesman
Fawzi Barhum as saying that the market attack required "an
earth-shattering response".
The Israeli military had said the ceasefire would last between 15:00
(12:00 GMT) and 19:00.
However, it had warned that the truce would only apply to areas where
Israeli soldiers were not currently operating, and it told residents
not to return to areas they had previously been asked to evacuate.
A mosque in the southern Gaza Strip collapses after an explosion
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri had rejected the truce as meaningless.
"The lull which Israel announced is media exploitation and has no
value because it excludes the volatile areas along the border, and we
won't be able to get the wounded out from those areas," he said in a
statement.
Sirens continued to sound in southern Israel after the ceasefire, to
warn of militant rocket attacks.
Israel said more than 50 rockets were fired from Gaza on Wednesday.
-BBC
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