JABALIYA, Gaza Strip, Oct 12 (AFP) - Israel's massive military onslaught in the northern Gaza Strip entered its third week Tuesday with the death toll topping 110 and scenes of utter devastation in the territory's largest refugee camp.
The situation in Jabaliya 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 al-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 metres (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.
In a statement issued after its weekly meeting on Tuesday, the Palestinian cabinet criticised "the international silence in the face of the continuous Israeli aggression in northern Gaza and the rest of the Palestinian areas which encourages Israel to continue its plans to... swallow up the West Bank."
Health NGO Medicins du Monde also lashed Israel over the offensive, accusing the Jewish state of using heavy weaponry against civilians and blocking humanitarian and medical aid reaching the area.
"There has been a considerable usage by the Israeli army of armed vehicles and planes. Missiles have frequently been used to target vehicles, buildings and people," the French agency said in a statement.
"Most of the wounded suffered serious injury which could lead to handicaps because of the frequent usage by the Israeli army of heavy weapons such as missiles."
The organisations called humanitarian and medical access a "major problem."
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.
"The economic situation in Gaza is very negative. Some 70 percent of the population are living below the poverty line... and unemployment stands at 44 percent," Brisson said, adding that 120 houses a month are being demolished by Israeli forces.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, keen to deliver a decisive blow to Gaza-based militant factions before next year's planned pullout, has ordered the continuation of the operation despite the reported reservations of some senior officers.