By Sue Pleming and Nidal al-Mughrabi
UNITED NATIONS/GAZA (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council called for an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip on Thursday but Israeli warplanes kept up attacks.
After days of intense haggling, the Security Council passed a resolution urging an immediate cease-fire and for Israel to fully withdraw from Gaza after a 13-day air-and-ground offensive. The United States abstained in the vote.
The resolution, pressed for by Arab countries in the face of efforts by Britain, France and the United States for a more muted statement, called for arrangements to prevent arms smuggling into Gaza and for its borders to be opened.
It said there should be "unimpeded provision" and distribution of aid to the territory, home to 1.5 million people, many of whom are dependent on food assistance.
Moments before the resolution was passed, Israeli warplanes dropped bombs on areas on the outskirts of Gaza, the main city in the north of the territory.
Earlier on Thursday, ambulance workers ventured onto the battlefield to gather decomposing bodies from the rubble. Hamas officials said the Palestinian death toll had risen to 765, of whom more than a third were children.
While the United States abstained from the U.N. resolution, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States backed the text and had only abstained because it wanted to see the results of an Egyptian mediation effort.
In Gaza, local ambulance crews and the Red Crescent, using a time slot coordinated with Israeli forces, said they collected corpses in places that had been too risky to reach since Israel began its ground attack six days ago.
They found four children starving beside the bodies of their mothers and evacuated scores of trapped and wounded, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.
Israel lost three soldiers in combat with Islamist militants who hold the Gaza Strip. Apart from a "friendly fire" incident which killed four, it was its heaviest one-day combat toll.
Ten soldiers have so far died in the campaign launched by Israel to crush Hamas forces and halt the firing of rockets from Gaza into Israel. Israel says it is doing what it can to avoid civilian casualties but accuses Hamas of deliberately placing its fighters close to homes and mosques.
(Reporting by Luke Baker; Editing by Ralph Gowling)
