The diplomatic wrangling came as at least 42 Palestinians were killed early Sunday in an airstrike in Gaza City, the deadliest episode in the recent bloodshed.
Diplomats and international leaders were unable Sunday to mediate a cease-fire in the latest conflict between Israel and Hamas, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel vowed to continue the fight and the United Nations Security Council failed to agree on a joint response to the worsening bloodshed. The diplomatic wrangling occurred after the fighting, the most intense seen in Gaza and Israel for seven years, entered its deadliest phase yet. At least 42 Palestinians were killed early Sunday morning in an airstrike on several apartments in Gaza City, Palestinian officials said, the conflict’s most lethal episode so far. The number of people in killed in Gaza rose to 197 over the six days of the conflict, according to Palestinian officials, while the number of Israeli residents killed by Palestinian militants climbed to 11, including one soldier, the Israeli government said. On Sunday afternoon, the street bombed in the airstrike made for a desperate scene as Anas al-Yazji, a graphic designer, clambered over the rubble, searching for his fiancée, Shaimaa Abul Ouf. There was a wallet squeezed between the fragments of the shattered walls, a necklace, a Quran, even a few handbags. But 12 hours after Israel struck the building — aiming, the Israeli Army said, at an underground Hamas tunnel network — there was still no sign of Ms. Abul Ouf. “I will wait here until we find her,” Mr. al-Yazji,24, said as a yellow digger shoveled rubble from one pile to another. “Then I will bury her.” By nightfall, the fighting showed no sign of letting up. “Citizens of Israel,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a speech on Sunday afternoon at the headquarters of the Israeli Army in Tel Aviv, “our campaign against the terrorist organizations is continuing with full force.” He added: “We want to exact a price from the aggressor, as in all types of terrorism. To restore the quiet and security and to rebuild deterrence and governance will take time.” Mr. Netanyahu’s pledge came amid rising international criticism of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, which began last Monday after Hamas fired rockets at Jerusalem following a month of rising tensions between Palestinians and Israelis in the holy city. The Israeli Army says its goal is to destroy the military infrastructure of Hamas, the Islamist militant group that controls the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian enclave of about two million people that is under an Israeli and Egyptian blockade. Israel blames Hamas for the civilian casualties in Gaza, saying the group hides militants in residential areas. That explanation came under intense scrutiny over the weekend when Israeli jets destroyed a tower in Gaza City that housed two major international news outlets, The Associated Press and Al Jazeera, after calling the building’s owner and telling him to evacuate tenants. An Israeli strike also killed at least 10 members of the same family in a house in a refugee camp and caused collateral damage to a clinic run by Doctors Without Borders, a medical aid group. Then on Sunday morning, the airstrike hit Ms.
