GAZA: Israel claimed to have recaptured the border areas of Gaza on Tuesday as fear and chaos reigned among the 2.3 million Palestinians living in the coastal territory, which has been hammered by thousands of Israeli munitions for four days now.

A top United Nations official, however, has declared said a total siege of the Pal­estinian enclave is banned under international law.

Gaza’s health ministry said the bombing had killed around 900 people and wounded 4,250. In Gaza City, entire blocks have been red­uced to rubble. The strikes intensified as night fell, sha­king the ground and sending more columns of smoke and flames into the sky.

Meanwhile, Volker Turk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said the imposition of sieges that endanger the lives of civilians by depriving them of goods essential for their survival is prohibited under international humanitarian law.

“International humanitarian law is clear: the obligation to take constant care to spare the civilian population and civilian objects remains applicable throughout the attacks,” Mr Turk said in a statement.

The siege risks seriously compounding the already dire human rights and humanitarian situation in Gaza, including the capacity of medical facilities to operate, especially in light of increasing numbers of injured, the statement said.

Any restrictions on the movement of people and goods to implement a siege must be justified by military necessity, or may amount to collective punishment, the statement added.

Four Palestinian journalists were among those killed in Israeli air strikes on Gaza City on Tuesday, media uni­ons and officials have said.

The latest deaths bring the number of Palestinian journalists killed in the fighting since Saturday to eight, the Palestinian Press Union said in a statement.

The chief of Gaza’s Hamas-run government media office, Salameh Maarouf, identified the three as Said al-Taweel, director of Al-Khamisa news agency; press photographer Moham­med Sobboh, and Hisham Nawajhah, a correspondent for a Gaza news agency.

Later in the day, the press union said the head of its committee of women journalists, Salam Khalil, was killed along with her husband and children when the family’s home in the northern Gaza Strip was hit in a “treacherous” Israeli bombing.