JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel said Thursday it has called up another 16,000 reservists, allowing it to potentially widen its Gaza offensive against the territory's Hamas rulers in a three-week-old war that has killed more than 1,300 Palestinians and more than 50 Israelis.

The new call-up follows another day of intensive fighting, in which tank shells struck a U.N. school where Palestinians were sheltering and an airstrike tore through a crowded Gaza shopping area. At least 116 Palestinians and three Israeli soldiers were killed Wednesday alone.

Speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not permitted to discuss the matter with the press, an Israeli defense official said the purpose of the latest call-up was to provide relief for troops currently on the Gaza firing line. However, Israeli officials have also said they do not rule out broadening operations in the coming days.

The move coincides with stalled diplomatic efforts to end the war, which has claimed more than 1,360 Palestinian lives -- most of them civilians -- and reduced entire Gaza neighborhoods to rubble since it began on July 8.

Israeli attacks in the strip continued Thursday, with witnesses saying that munitions struck the Omar Ibn al-Khatab mosque next to a U.N. school in the northern town of Beit Lahiya. Israeli fire near a U.N. school in the Jebaliya camp killed at least 17 people the day before.

Fifty-six Israeli soldiers and three civilians on the Israeli side have died in the Gaza campaign, as Palestinians have fired hundreds of rockets at Israel -- some reaching major cities -- and carried out attacks through tunnels beneath the heavily guarded frontier.

Israel has now called up a total of 86,000 reserves during the Gaza conflict, which it launched to try to end the rocket fire from Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza.

An initial aerial campaign was widened into a ground offensive on July 17. Since then the campaign has concentrated on destroying more than 30 cross-border tunnels that militants have constructed to carry out attacks on Israeli territory.

Israel says that most of the 32 tunnels it has uncovered have now been demolished and that getting rid of the remainder will take no more than a few days.

The strike in Beit Lahiya early Thursday damaged water tanks on the roof of a building near the mosque, sending shrapnel flying into the adjacent school compound, where dozens of Palestinians displaced by the fighting had taken shelter.

"The shrapnel from the strike on the mosque hit people who were in the street and at the entrance of the school," said Sami Salebi, an area resident.

Raw: Smoke, Explosions Fill Gaza SkylinePlay Video

Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra said at least 15 people were wounded, with three of them in critical condition.

Kifah Rafati, 40, was being treated for shrapnel injuries at the nearby Kamal Adwan hospital. She said she and her six children had been sleeping in a classroom facing the mosque when the explosion went off. "There is no safety anywhere," she said.

On Wednesday Israeli tank shells struck a U.N. school in the Jebaliya refugee camp where some 3,300 Gazans had crammed in to seek refuge from the fighting, killing at least 17 people and drawing sharp condemnation from the United Nations.

The Israeli military said it was responding to mortar fire coming from the area of the school.

But Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the deadly school shelling "outrageous" and "unjustifiable," and demanded an immediate humanitarian cease-fire.

"Nothing is more shameful than attacking sleeping children," the U.N. chief said.

The White House also criticized the shelling of the U.N. school.

"We are extremely concerned that thousands of internally displaced Palestinians who have been called on by the Israeli military to evacuate their homes are not safe in U.N. designated shelters in Gaza," said Bernadette Meehan, a spokeswoman for the White House's National Security Council.

Later on Wednesday, an Israeli airstrike hit a crowded shopping area in the Shijaiyah district in Gaza City, killing at least 16 people, including Palestinian video journalist Rami Rayan, who was wearing a press vest at the time, and wounding more than 200 people, al-Kidra said.

Thursday marked a third day of particularly heavy Israeli air and artillery attacks, at a time when Egyptian cease-fire efforts appeared to have stalled. Israeli media said late Wednesday that Israel's Security Cabinet decided to press forward with the operation.

Egyptian officials, meanwhile, met with an Israeli envoy about Israel's conditions for a cease-fire, including disarming Hamas, according to a high-ranking Egyptian security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to discuss the delicate diplomatic efforts.

Hamas has said it will only halt fire once it receives guarantees that a seven-year-old Gaza border blockade by Israel and Egypt will be lifted.

Israel says it wants to decimate Hamas' rocket-launching capability, diminish its weapons arsenal and demolish the tunnels. It has launched more than 4,000 strikes against Hamas-linked targets, including rocket launchers and mosques where it says weapons were being stored.

Israeli strikes have also hit dozens of homes. Mahmoud Abu Rahma of the Palestinian human rights group Al Mezan said nearly half of the Palestinians killed so far died in their homes.

Israeli officials have said Hamas uses Gaza's civilians as human shields by firing rockets from crowded neighborhoods. Palestinian militants have fired more than 2,600 rockets at Israel over the past three weeks.

However, Pierre Kraehenbuehl, chief of the U.N. aid agency for Palestinian refugees, said Israel must try harder to ensure that civilians are not hurt, especially in Gaza, where 1.7 million people are squeezed into a small coastal territory. His agency has opened 80 of its schools to more than 200,000 Palestinians fleeing the violence.

"What maybe the world forgets ... is that the people of Gaza have nowhere to go," he said. "So when the fighting starts and they move, it is not as if they can cross a border to somewhere."

___

Barzak reported from Gaza City, Gaza Strip.

Israel calls up 16,000 more reserves as war rages

The move may allow Israel to substantially widen its offensive against militants in Gaza.
Palestinian death toll tops 1,360

View Gallery

Washington (AFP) - The United States confirmed it had restocked Israel's supplies of ammunition, hours after finally sharpening its tone to condemn an attack on a United Nations school in Gaza.

But while both the White House and the State Department condemned the shelling of the UN-run school in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza in which at least 16 Palestinians were killed, neither would assign blame to staunch US ally Israel.

"Obviously nothing justifies the killing of innocent civilians seeking shelter in a UN facility," deputy State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf acknowledged, in some of the toughest US comments since the start of the 23-day fighting in the Gaza Strip.

"Innocent Palestinians seeking refuge in these schools should not have shells dropped on them, should not come under attack."

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA said Israeli forces had hit the school, which had been sheltering some 3,300 Gazans.

But despite heated exchanges with reporters, Harf stressed that "we don't know for certain who shelled this school, we need to get all the facts."

National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan also condemned "those responsible for hiding weapons in United Nations facilities in Gaza" and warned of rising fears that thousands of Palestinians who have been told by Israel to leave their homes increasingly had nowhere to go in the blockaded narrow coastal strip.

View gallery

Israeli artillery fires a 155mm shell towards targets in the Gaza Strip from their position near Isr …

US officials also warned that patience with "crazy" Israeli criticism of would-be-peacemaker John Kerry had snapped.

- New ammunition for Israel -

The Pentagon confirmed the Israeli military had requested additional ammunition to restock its dwindling supplies on July 20, with the US Defense Department approving the sale just three days later.

"The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to US national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defense capability," Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said in a statement.

"This defense sale is consistent with those objectives."

Two of the requested munitions came from a little-known stockpile of ammunition stored by the US military on the ground in Israel for emergency use by the Jewish state. The War Reserve Stockpile Ammunition-Israel is estimated to be worth $1 billion.

View gallery

A Palestinian, wounded in an Israeli air strike on a market in the Shejaiya neighbourhood, is treate …

The decision to provide ammunition to Israel could fuel controversy, coming just as Washington expresses growing concern about the deaths of more than 1,300 Palestinians, most of them civilians, since the Israeli operation began on July 8.

Kirby said Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel told his Israeli counterpart that the United States was concerned about the deadly consequences of the spiraling conflict, including a "worsening humanitarian situation" in Gaza, and called for a ceasefire and end to hostilities.

He also renewed calls for the disarmament of Gaza's Hamas rulers and "all terrorist groups."

Relations between Israel and its staunch ally the United States have plunged in recent days after Kerry returned from a mission to the Middle East to try to broker a ceasefire between the Israelis and Hamas militants.

Anonymous Israeli officials have hit out at Kerry's truce proposal, calling it "a strategic terrorist attack" and criticizing it for being a "Hamas wish-list" including moves to lift a long-standing Israeli blockade of Gaza while failing to address Israel's security concerns, such as Hamas rocket fire and a network of underground tunnels.

And on Tuesday a fabricated transcript of a call between US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went viral on social media.

- Out to hurt ties? -

Stressing the "unprecedented" US support for the Jewish state, Harf hit out at Israeli elites' "offensive and absurd" claims that Kerry backs Hamas.

She rubbished the fake transcript as "complete crap," adding "there's clearly people... who are putting out false and defamatory and absurd information."

"I don't know what else you can assume about the intentions except that they’re designed to hurt our relationship," she added.

Washington, which has provided billions in military aid to Israel, including funding the Iron Dome shield protecting the country from Hamas rockets, was "very committed" to the security of the Jewish state, which is "why these vicious attacks on the secretary are just crazy," she added.

And US lawmakers are working on a package of additional military support from Washington to commit $225 million for the Iron Dome missile defense shield.

More than 100 people died in Israeli strikes across Gaza Wednesday, medics said, including 17 at a crowded marketplace, sending the Palestinian toll from the 23 days of fighting to 1,363.

On the Israeli side, the conflict has cost the lives of 56 Israeli soldiers, and two civilians.

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — The head of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis says he won't resign, despite criticism that he and other local Roman Catholic Church leaders concealed allegations about abusive priests, and he again dismissed allegations of sexual misconduct of his own.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press, Archbishop John Nienstedt said Wednesday that he doesn't believe he has mismanaged the scandal. He said he was shown memos about problem priests, but didn't fully grasp the scope of the troubles until last fall, after a former archdiocese employee went public with her concerns.

"In a sense, you could say that I didn't see the forest through the trees," Nienstedt said. "I saw the trees on a day-to-day basis. But when everything started coming out in October, whoa, Nelly, I just wasn't aware that there was the kind of breadth to the whole thing — which surprised me and kind of sickened me."

Nienstedt has been under pressure since his top adviser on church law, Jennifer Haselberger, resigned last year and publicly accused church leaders of mishandling several cases. Haselberger said she tried to ring alarm bells about recent troubling behavior by two priests but that she felt ignored. Now, the church faces a public nuisance lawsuit that has forced painful revelations and the disclosures of names of dozens of accused priests. The archbishop himself has been the subject of internal and police investigations into alleged sexual misconduct, which he has forcefully denied and did so again Wednesday.

Some Catholics and several newspapers have called for Nienstedt to resign. He publicly addressed those in a column published Thursday in The Catholic Spirit, the archdiocese's newspaper.

"I am bound to continue in my office as long as the Holy Father has appointed me here. I have acknowledged my responsibility in the current crisis we face, and I also take responsibility for leading our archdiocese to a new and better day," he wrote.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests issued a statement saying it is "saddened" that Nienstedt won't resign "but distraught that he continues to deceive."

After months of declining interview requests, Nienstedt said he is now meeting with media because he wants people to know the archdiocese is in a better place than it was 15 months ago. He said that 3,000 priest files have been reviewed and that the archdiocese is on top of the clergy misconduct situation.

View gallery

Archbishop John Nienstedt talks with a reporter at his office in St. Paul, Minn. Wednesday, July 30, …

He said the archdiocese has new protocols for reporting allegations, including going to police immediately for anything not deemed frivolous.

Nienstedt has been the center of two separate investigations himself. One, alleging he touched a boy inappropriately in a public setting, resulted in no criminal charges. The other, which Nienstedt initiated, is unresolved and involves allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior by him with seminarians and priests. Nienstedt says there's no truth to those allegations.

"I knew that I had nothing to hide and that I hadn't done anything immoral or criminal — or inappropriate," he said.

Nienstedt also discussed the possibility of the archdiocese filing for bankruptcy amid concerns about increased financial vulnerability for old child sex abuse claims. He said that it's an option the archdiocese has considered but that he would like to avoid it.

"We are looking at the financial piece because that's a very big concern of mine," he said

In his column for the archdiocese's newspaper, Nienstedt wrote that he regrets that some Catholics have lost confidence in him and said he hopes to win back their trust.

"I've never lied," he told the AP, adding: "A bishop is not just a CEO of a company. A bishop is really a father of a family of faith. ... When problems arise, he doesn't run away, but he stays and confronts the situation."

___

Associated Press writer Steve Karnowski contributed from Minneapolis.

___

Follow Amy Forliti on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/amyforliti

Related video

The head of Minnesota's archdiocese denies claims that he mishandled allegations about abusive priests.
'I just wasn't aware'

After a United Nations-run school sheltering more than 3,000 Palestinians was shelled early Wednesday, UN official Chris Gunness could not contain his grief while on camera with Al Jazeera Arabic.

"The rights of Palestinians, and even their children, are wholesale denied... and it's appalling," Gunness, spokesman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), told Al Jazeera Arabic from Jerusalem. The interviewer appears to thank him for appearing, upon which Gunness breaks down and weeps.

Gaza's Ministry of Health said at least 17 people were killed and 90 wounded by the school shelling. An Israeli military spokesman told the New York Times that Israeli troops did not target UN facilities, but did respond to Palestinian militant fire from nearby the school in Jabaliya refugee camp.

Reuters Videos

Israel calls up more reservists

Watch video

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel said Thursday it has called up another 16,000 reservists, allowing it to potentially widen its Gaza offensive against the territory's Hamas rulers in a three-week-old war that has killed more than 1,300 Palestinians and more than 50 Israelis.

The new call-up follows another day of intensive fighting, in which tank shells struck a U.N. school where Palestinians were sheltering and an airstrike tore through a crowded Gaza shopping area. At least 116 Palestinians and three Israeli soldiers were killed Wednesday alone.

Speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not permitted to discuss the matter with the press, an Israeli defense official said the purpose of the latest call-up was to provide relief for troops currently on the Gaza firing line. However, Israeli officials have also said they do not rule out broadening operations in the coming days.

The move coincides with stalled diplomatic efforts to end the war, which has claimed more than 1,360 Palestinian lives -- most of them civilians -- and reduced entire Gaza neighborhoods to rubble since it began on July 8.

Israeli attacks in the strip continued Thursday, with witnesses saying that munitions struck the Omar Ibn al-Khatab mosque next to a U.N. school in the northern town of Beit Lahiya. Israeli fire near a U.N. school in the Jebaliya camp killed at least 17 people the day before.

Fifty-six Israeli soldiers and three civilians on the Israeli side have died in the Gaza campaign, as Palestinians have fired hundreds of rockets at Israel -- some reaching major cities -- and carried out attacks through tunnels beneath the heavily guarded frontier.

Israel has now called up a total of 86,000 reserves during the Gaza conflict, which it launched to try to end the rocket fire from Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza.

An initial aerial campaign was widened into a ground offensive on July 17. Since then the campaign has concentrated on destroying more than 30 cross-border tunnels that militants have constructed to carry out attacks on Israeli territory.

View gallery

Smoke rises after an Israeli strike in Gaza City, northern Gaza Strip, Thursday, July 31, 2014. Isra …

Israel says that most of the 32 tunnels it has uncovered have now been demolished and that getting rid of the remainder will take no more than a few days.

The strike in Beit Lahiya early Thursday damaged water tanks on the roof of a building near the mosque, sending shrapnel flying into the adjacent school compound, where dozens of Palestinians displaced by the fighting had taken shelter.

"The shrapnel from the strike on the mosque hit people who were in the street and at the entrance of the school," said Sami Salebi, an area resident.

Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra said at least 15 people were wounded, with three of them in critical condition.

Kifah Rafati, 40, was being treated for shrapnel injuries at the nearby Kamal Adwan hospital. She said she and her six children had been sleeping in a classroom facing the mosque when the explosion went off. "There is no safety anywhere," she said.

On Wednesday Israeli tank shells struck a U.N. school in the Jebaliya refugee camp where some 3,300 Gazans had crammed in to seek refuge from the fighting, killing at least 17 people and drawing sharp condemnation from the United Nations.

The Israeli military said it was responding to mortar fire coming from the area of the school.

Raw: Smoke, Explosions Fill Gaza SkylinePlay Video

But Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the deadly school shelling "outrageous" and "unjustifiable," and demanded an immediate humanitarian cease-fire.

"Nothing is more shameful than attacking sleeping children," the U.N. chief said.

The White House also criticized the shelling of the U.N. school.

"We are extremely concerned that thousands of internally displaced Palestinians who have been called on by the Israeli military to evacuate their homes are not safe in U.N. designated shelters in Gaza," said Bernadette Meehan, a spokeswoman for the White House's National Security Council.

Later on Wednesday, an Israeli airstrike hit a crowded shopping area in the Shijaiyah district in Gaza City, killing at least 16 people, including Palestinian video journalist Rami Rayan, who was wearing a press vest at the time, and wounding more than 200 people, al-Kidra said.

Thursday marked a third day of particularly heavy Israeli air and artillery attacks, at a time when Egyptian cease-fire efforts appeared to have stalled. Israeli media said late Wednesday that Israel's Security Cabinet decided to press forward with the operation.

Egyptian officials, meanwhile, met with an Israeli envoy about Israel's conditions for a cease-fire, including disarming Hamas, according to a high-ranking Egyptian security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to discuss the delicate diplomatic efforts.

Hamas has said it will only halt fire once it receives guarantees that a seven-year-old Gaza border blockade by Israel and Egypt will be lifted.

Israel says it wants to decimate Hamas' rocket-launching capability, diminish its weapons arsenal and demolish the tunnels. It has launched more than 4,000 strikes against Hamas-linked targets, including rocket launchers and mosques where it says weapons were being stored.

Israeli strikes have also hit dozens of homes. Mahmoud Abu Rahma of the Palestinian human rights group Al Mezan said nearly half of the Palestinians killed so far died in their homes.

Israeli officials have said Hamas uses Gaza's civilians as human shields by firing rockets from crowded neighborhoods. Palestinian militants have fired more than 2,600 rockets at Israel over the past three weeks.

However, Pierre Kraehenbuehl, chief of the U.N. aid agency for Palestinian refugees, said Israel must try harder to ensure that civilians are not hurt, especially in Gaza, where 1.7 million people are squeezed into a small coastal territory. His agency has opened 80 of its schools to more than 200,000 Palestinians fleeing the violence.

"What maybe the world forgets ... is that the people of Gaza have nowhere to go," he said. "So when the fighting starts and they move, it is not as if they can cross a border to somewhere."

___

Barzak reported from Gaza City, Gaza Strip.