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GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel briefly deployed ground troops inside the Gaza Strip for the first time early Sunday as its military warned northern Gaza residents to evacuate their homes, part of a widening offensive that has killed more than 160 Palestinians.

Neither Israel nor Palestinian militants show signs of agreeing to a cease-fire, despite calls by the United Nations Security Council and others to end the increasingly bloody six-day offensive. With Israel massing tanks and soldiers at Gaza's borders, some fear that could signal a wider ground offensive that would cause heavy casualties.

"We don't know when the operation will end," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a Cabinet meeting Sunday. "It might take a long time."

Early Sunday, Israeli troops launched a brief raid into northern Gaza to destroy what the military described as a rocket-launching site, an operation the military said left four soldiers slightly wounded.

The Israeli air force later dropped leaflets warning residents to evacuate their homes ahead of what Israel's military spokesman described as a "short and temporary" campaign against northern Gaza to begin sometime after 12 p.m. (0900 GMT). The area is home to at least 100,000 people.

It was not clear whether the possible attack would be confined to stepped-up airstrikes or whether it might include a sizeable ground offensive — something that Israel has so far been reluctant to undertake.

As the ultimatum drew near, hundreds fled Beit Lahiya, one of the communities the Israeli announcement affected. Some raced by in pickup trucks, waving white flags.

"They are sending warning messages," resident Mohammad Abu Halemah said. "Once we received the message, we felt scared to stay in our homes. We want to leave."

Adnan Abu Hassna, a spokesman for the U.N. agency in charge of aiding Palestinian refugees, said eight schools were opened as temporary shelters, and about 4,000 people had moved in. He said more schools would be opened if needed.

Ignoring international appeals for a cease-fire, Israel widened its range of Gaza bombing targets Saturday to include civilian institutions with suspected Hamas ties. One strike hit a center for the disabled, killing two patients and wounding four people. In a second attack, an Israeli warplane flattened the home of Gaza police chief Taysir al-Batsh and damaged a nearby mosque as evening prayers ended, killing at least 18 people. Fifty were wounded, including al-Batsh himself.

On Sunday, hundreds chanting "God is Great" joined the funeral procession for 17 members of al-Batsh's extended family who were killed. Among the dead were his sister-in-law and her husband, along with the couple's seven children, ranging in age from 13 to 28. A neighbor also was killed.

Mourners carried the bodies, wrapped in the green flags of the Islamic militant Hamas, through the streets on stretchers.

The attack reduced the al-Batsh family home to sand and rubble. Abdallah al-Batsh, a nephew of the police chief, said Israel had not given warning before the strike.

Hamas activists said the group's military wing had asked the families of its members to leave their homes, after Israel targeted several such homes in a series of airstrikes.

On Sunday, Palestinians with foreign passports began leaving Gaza through the Erez border crossing. Israel, which is cooperating in the evacuation, said 800 Palestinians living in Gaza have passports from countries including Australia, the United Kingdom and the U.S.

Rawan Mohanna, a 21-year-old chemistry major at the University of Texas, said she had arrived in Gaza with her family a month ago because her older sister was getting married to a Gazan.

"We got the wedding out of the way before all of this happened," Mohanna said. Mohanna, who lives in Dallas, said her family is now returning to the U.S. with mixed feelings because her newlywed sister and other relatives were staying behind.

"We are so fortunate ... that we have the right to travel," she said. "People in Gaza, they can't even leave, and that's such a basic right. It's stripped away from them. It's bittersweet that we get to leave but they are still there and they can't get out."

Israel has launched more than 1,300 air strikes since the offensive began, military spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said Sunday. Palestinian militants have launched more than 800 rockets at Israel, including 130 in the last 24 hours, the Israeli military said Sunday. Several Israelis have been wounded, but there have been no fatalities.

Israel has said it's acting in self-defense against rockets that have disrupted life across much of the country. It also accuses Hamas of using Gaza's civilians as human shields by firing rockets from there.

Critics say Israel's heavy bombardment of one of the most densely populated territories in the world is itself the main factor putting civilians at risk.

The offensive marks the heaviest fighting since a similar eight-day campaign in November 2012 to stop Gaza rocket fire. The outbreak of violence follows the kidnappings and killings of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank, the kidnapping and killing of a Palestinian teenager in an apparent revenge attack, and wide-ranging Israeli moves against Hamas militants and infrastructure in the West Bank.

Foreign diplomats also continued their efforts to end the bloodshed. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier will fly to Israel for talks Monday and Tuesday with both the Israelis and the Palestinians. Meanwhile, the Arab League will meet Monday to discuss the offensive.

In the West Bank city of Ramallah, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he had appealed to U.N. Secretary-General Bank Ki-moon for "international protection" for the Palestinian people.

"The situation has become unbearable — hundreds of martyrs and thousands of wounded and huge destruction," Abbas said. Despite forming a government with Hamas' backing last month, Abbas' influence in Gaza is minimal.

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Enav reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writer Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed to this report.

On writing about Gus' father's Alzheimer's when she had no experience with the disease

I actually have been very pleased because a couple people who do have [experience with Alzheimer's] said they thought I must have. And I feel very comforted to hear that, in a sense, because I think that when you write about a disease with which you don't have personal experience, there's always a risk of it being very presumptuous. And if you get it wrong, you really have done something that crosses a line. You have to be very, very careful.

I have a child who has special needs, and I am very sensitized to this because when I read books that have fictional characters with conditions like her, or syndromes like hers, and they don't ring true, I feel invaded in a way. So it's been very important to me in my work, when I write about something like Alzheimer's, to really talk to people who have experienced that and try to get it right.

On how the book ends

I think with this story, by the end, it's taken on a little bit the shape of a classic tragedy in that you can't parse through where the responsibility is. But at a certain part, all the pieces have just come together and there's not going to be a happy ending here — it's just a downhill roll. I think of this as what Gus describes in the end as a series of "small collaborative sins;" that everybody's a little bit guilty, and nobody's very guilty.

McLEAN, Va. (AP) — Police in Virginia on Thursday backed off efforts to take sexually explicit photos of a 17-year-old to prove a sexting case against him.

Police and prosecutors faced a wave of criticism following news media reports that they had obtained a warrant to take photos of the teen's erect penis. Police wanted the pictures to compare against photos he is accused of sending to his 15-year-old girlfriend at the time.

On Thursday, Manassas Police Lt. Brian Larkin said the Police Department will not proceed with the plan to take the pictures and will let a search warrant authorizing the photos to expire.

Privacy advocates had criticized the plan as a violation of the teen's constitutional rights.

The teen's aunt, who serves as his legal guardian, said she had not heard of the police department's reversal until contacted by an Associated Press reporter Thursday afternoon. She said she would be ecstatic if police follow through on their statement that they will no longer pursue the photos. But she said she won't be fully satisfied until the case against her nephew is dropped entirely.

The aunt had sent her nephew to West Virginia, where he grew up, for the past several weeks, fearful that police would show up to enforce the search warrant. The teen's defense lawyers said authorities had explained that they intended to take the teen to a hospital and chemically induce an erection to facilitate the photographs.

The Associated Press is not identifying the teen or the aunt in accordance with a policy of not identifying juvenile suspects.

Manassas Police Chief Douglas Keen posted a statement Thursday saying that "the decision to pursue prosecution or not lies with the Commonwealth Attorney's Office and not the Police Department."

Commonwealth's Attorney Paul Ebert declined to comment on the case in detail, citing ethical rules about discussion of pending cases outside the courtroom.

The teen is charged in juvenile court with felony counts of possession and manufacture of child pornography. The aunt maintains that the charges are overblown and said the plan to pursue photos of her nephew in an aroused state came about only after she and her nephew refused to accept a plea bargain that had been offered.

Larkin said he had no information on why the department no longer plans to pursue the photos. On Wednesday night, the department issued a statement saying it was not their policy "to authorize invasive search procedures of suspects in cases of this nature" but made no definitive statements about whether they would continue to pursue the photos that had been specifically authorized in the search warrant.

Rebecca Glenberg, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, said the pursuit of the photos would have raised serious constitutional questions, compounded by the fact that the subject of the photos would have been a minor and by the fact that authorities apparently intended to induce an erection through a medical injection.

"People have a constitutional right to control their bodies," said Glenberg, who was unaware of any similar case.

The aunt felt certain that the tidal wave of criticism against authorities is the only reason police reversed course.

"They would have gotten away with this. They were not going to back off," she said.

Manassas City Manager Patrick Pate acknowledged Thursday that the department and the city had been fielding irate calls from across the country and internationally after the story broke. He said the city was being portrayed unfairly, given the fact that the photos were never actually taken. He also downplayed the possibility that they would ever have been taken, even though he acknowledged that a warrant authorizing them had been issued.

The teen's lawyers did not immediately return calls seeking comment Thursday.

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