Pat Dollard | Young Americans

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israel struck hard against targets in Gaza on Wednesday, killing at least 20 Palestinians in a day of heavy fighting that also saw three Israeli soldiers die in a brazen Hamas ambush.

The surge in violence came after a relatively quiet month and threatened to unravel an Egyptian effort to mediate a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.

On Wednesday morning, Palestinian militants ambushed an Israeli ground force in northern Gaza, killing three soldiers, the military said. The soldiers entered Gaza in pursuit of two Hamas militants who planted a bomb near the border and were ambushed by another Hamas force, Israeli defense officials said.

Other troops went in to the area and came under mortar fire from militants. The army said it responded with an airstrike and hit militants in the Bureij area.

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev called the deadly Hamas ambush a “provocation,” describing Israel’s military operations as “defensive.”

“The only logic here is that Hamas wants to sacrifice the civilian population of Gaza in order to advance its extremist and hateful agenda,” he said.

The ambush was near the Nahal Oz terminal used by Israel to pump fuel into Gaza. The fuel supply was cut off last week after two Israeli civilians were killed in a Palestinian attack on the terminal—the only source of fuel for Gaza.

Wednesday’s death toll was the highest since an Israeli military offensive in early March that killed more than 120 Gazans, including dozens of civilians. Since then, Israel and Hamas appeared to be honoring an informal truce, though punctuated with Palestinian rocket attacks, some Israeli airstrikes and border skirmishes.

That changed dramatically Wednesday.

In the day’s deadliest attack, an Israeli helicopter fired four missiles at targets near the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, witnesses said.

Reuters cameraman Fadal Shana was killed while filming Israeli tank movements, apparently in an airstrike in the same area.

Other cameramen who rushed to the scene said they saw the Reuters jeep on fire, and Shana’s body lying next to it.

As colleagues rushed toward Shana, another missile was fired, said Wissam Nassar, a photographer with the Maan news agency. “There was an airstrike. We were thrown back, myself and another person.”

In separate Gaza clashes, five other Palestinian militants were killed, Palestinian officials said.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the “Israeli aggression in Gaza” and urged all sides to “cooperate with Egyptian efforts to reach a truce to halt the bloody cycle of violence.” Abbas is visiting Moscow and has talks scheduled with President Bush in Washington next week.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the violence cast doubt on Egyptian cease-fire efforts. “There can be no discussion of a truce in the midst of these crimes,” he said, threatening revenge against Israel.

Israeli officials initially said the fuel deliveries would be suspended further because of Wednesday’s ambush. But just hours after the attack, Israel resumed some shipments to Gaza’s 1.4 million residents. It was not clear why the decision was reversed.

Mahmoud Khuzandar, deputy director of the Gaza fuel station owners’ association, said eight truckloads of fuel were delivered. He said half was cooking gas and the rest was diesel fuel for Gaza’s only power plant.

The fuel deliveries were expected to provide minor relief to the Gaza Strip, though they were only a tiny fraction of what the impoverished territory needs, Khuzandar said.