Gaza City, Gaza - The United Nations has protested the Israeli military bombing of Asma Elementary school where 400 Palestinians had taken shelter and three of them were killed, and a second school where 44 were killed, despite U.N. officials telling Israeli military officials that it was a U.N. school filled with civilians.

About 400 people who had fled their homes in Beit Lahiy because of violence there were being sheltered in the U.N.-run Asma Elementary school.

Asma Elementary was clearly marked as a U.N. installation, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency said in a statement Tuesday.

"Well before the current fighting, UNRWA had given to the Israeli authorities the GPS (global positioning system) co-ordinates of all its installations in Gaza, including Asma Elementary School," UNRWA officials said in a news release.

"UNRWA is strongly protesting these killings to the Israeli authorities and is calling for an immediate and impartial investigation," the agency continued. "Where it is found that international humanitarian law has been violated, those responsible must be held to account."

Three men from the same family were killed Monday night from a direct hit by an Israeli bomb on the school that took place just as the three left the school toilet.

Another U.N. facility, the Ash-Shouka School in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, was also bombed Monday night and 44 Palestinian civilians were killed there, according to reports.

Other bomb attacks Monday night struck homes belonging to Hamas leaders, or people affiliated with Hamas.

The US House joins the Senate offering staunch support to Israel in its14 days of assault on Gaza, that has killed 800 Palestinians.

"Today, we reaffirm that Israel, like any nation, has a right to self-defense when under attack," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday.

Also on Thursday, the US Senate said that Israel had an "inalienable right' to defend itself from attacks by Hamas.

"The rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza, which were increasing in frequency and range constituted an unacceptable security threat to which Israel had a responsibility to respond," she said, pointing to Israeli claims that it attacked Gaza in response to Hamas' rocket attacks on Israel.

Since Israel's military campaign on the impoverished strip started two-weeks ago, at least 800 Palestinians have been killed. The dead include at least 230 children and 92 women. Another 3,300 have also been wounded due to Israel's heavy military offensive and a deadly siege on the strip that has caused a severe lack of basic supplies such as food, sanitary water, medicine and fuel.

Ten Israeli soldiers and three civilians have been killed in combat or rocket attacks into Israel.

Pelosi backed the Bush administration position that a Friday UN ceasefire should address the root causes of the conflict to forge a peace that is 'durable and sustainable.'

The UN Security Council almost unanimously approved on Thursday a resolution for an 'immediate' and 'durable' ceasefire followed by the 'full withdrawal' of Israeli forces from Gaza.

Fourteen out of the Council's 15 members voted for the resolution which also demands "the unimpeded provision and distribution throughout Gaza of humanitarian assistance, including of food, fuel and medical treatment." The US abstained from voting on the ceasefire resolution.

Prime minister Ehud Olmert rejected the UN resolution as impractical, saying it would not be respected by Palestinian resistance forces such as Hamas--and as Tel Aviv has made abundantly clear, it has no intentions of abiding by Resolution 1860.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says it is "hard" for Israeli troops to spare civilian lives in the densely-populated Gaza Strip.

"It is very difficult in circumstances like Gaza, which is a very densely populated area," Rice told reporters on Friday when asked if Israel is living up to its humanitarian obligations during its massive military offensive in the beleaguered sliver.

During its now two-week military campaign, at least 783 Palestinians have been killed and thousands others have been injured.

To date there are 783 fatalities and 3,300 casualties, the vast majority of whom are ordinary civilians with at least 215 of the deaths being that of children..

On Friday, the Israel cabinet rejected a UN Security Council Resolution 1860 which calls for an immediate halt to the ongoing onslaught against Gaza.

UN aid agencies and the Red Cross have halted their activities in the impoverished strip after Israeli forces targeted a number of humanitarian convoys in the region.

  Israel prepares to respond to possible war crimes charges after its soldiers admitted to having used chemical weapons against Gazans.

Israeli government sources revealed on Friday that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had tasked an inter-ministerial team to clear Tel Aviv of possible war crimes charges relating to its three-week-long assault on Gaza.

Israeli Justice Minister Daniel Friedman will spearhead the efforts to coordinate a legal defense for civilians and the military amid world condemnation of Tel Aviv's war on Gaza.

Israel moved close to being prosecuted for war crimes after Norwegian found traces of depleted uranium in Gaza victims, suggesting that Israel used the illegal weapons in its war on the densely-populated territory.

The UN nuclear watchdog said on Wednesday that it would open an investigation into Israel's alleged use of depleted uranium weapons, which are listed as 'illegal weapons of mass destruction' in the Geneva Convention.

The case for Israeli war crimes became stronger on Thursday when the Israeli military admitted that it pounded the Palestinian coast with at least twenty phosphorus bombs during the offensive.

White phosphorus, classified as a 'chemical weapon' by the US intelligence, is a highly-incendiary substance that bursts into all-consuming flames that cannot be extinguished with water, burning flesh to the bone and often leading to death.

Under the Geneva Treaty of 1980, the use of white phosphorous as a weapon is prohibited.

Human rights group Amnesty International has also touched on the issue, saying that Tel Aviv used white phosphorus munitions "indiscriminately and illegally" in overcrowded areas of Gaza.

"The repeated use [of White Phosphorus] in this manner, despite evidence of its indiscriminate effects and its toll on civilians, is a war crime," said Donatella Rovera of the Amnesty International.

Eight Israeli human rights groups have also called for an investigation into the offensive -- which has left some 1,340 people dead and thousands of others hospitalized.

UN special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, Richard Falk, meanwhile, said Thursday that there is more than enough evidence that Israel committed war crimes in the strip.

According to Falk, the crimes committed in Gaza are clearly reminiscent of "the worst kind of international memories of the Warsaw Ghetto", which included the starvation and murder of Polish Jews by Nazi Germany in World War II.

Israel launched its Operation Cast Lead on December 27 to allegedly defend its territories from Hamas rockets, which were fired in retaliation for Israel's defiance of a ceasefire that had previously been in place.

The UN Charter and international law, however, does not give Israel the legal foundation for claiming self-defense in the case of the Gazans.