Death toll rises as Israel pounds Gaza, rockets target Tel Aviv

Updated

Egypt's president held out the "possibility" of a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza as Israeli jets and warships continued to pound the Gaza Strip in the bloodiest day yet of the five-day conflict.

Health ministry officials in Gaza said at least nine members of the same family - five of them children - were among 10 people killed when an Israeli missile destroyed a family home in Gaza City.

Israel's chief military spokesman Yoav Mordechai said Yihia Abayah, a senior commander of rocket operations in the Gaza Strip, had been the target.

He did not confirm whether Abayah was killed but told Israel's Channel 2 television "the outcome was that there were civilian casualties".

Other reports said the dead were a Hamas official named as Mohamed Dalou and his family.

As Hamas vowed revenge, Israel accused "cowardly" militants of "hiding behind their own people, using them as human shields".

Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Paul Hirschson told ABC News Breakfast that the total death toll in Gaza had risen past 60 people, while the AFP news agency reported that Israeli strikes killed 29 Palestinians on Sunday, making it the conflict's bloodiest day.

A separate air raid on a Gaza media centre damaged buildings used by Britain's Sky News and Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV buildings, with eight journalists wounded. One of them had one of his legs blown off.

The Israeli military said the strike targeted a rooftop "transmission antenna used by Hamas to carry out terror activity", and that journalists in the building had effectively been used as human shields by Gaza's rulers.

For their part, Gaza militants launched dozens of rockets into Israel and targeted its commercial capital Tel Aviv for a fourth day, with one attack in the morning and another after nightfall.

Israel's Iron Dome missile shield shot down both rockets, but falling debris from the daytime interception hit a car, which caught fire. Its driver was not hurt.

The Israeli military said 980 rockets had been fired from Gaza since the start of the escalation of the conflict on Wednesday, killing three civilians and wounding dozens more.

Diplomats converge on Cairo

Sorry, this video has expired Video: Phil Williams surveys damage from rocket attack on Ashkelon (ABC News)

In Cairo, senior Hamas officials said Egyptian-mediated talks with Israel to end the bloodshed were "positive" but now focused on the possible stumbling block of guaranteeing the terms of a truce.

Egypt's president Mohamed Morsi has held meetings with both Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal and Islamic Jihad chief Abdullah Shalah to discuss "Egyptian efforts to end the aggression," his office said, without giving details.

"There are now some indications that there is a possibility of a ceasefire soon between the two sides," Mr Morsi said. "We have no guarantees yet."

UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon called on Israel and Hamas to work with Egypt to reach a ceasefire and said he was heading to the region to contribute personally to that effort.

He was backed by Jordan's foreign minister Nasser Judeh, who called for a combined effort to resolve the crisis, which he said was "potentially explosive."

But Israel's foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman insisted that "the first and absolute condition for a truce is stopping all fire from Gaza," and that all armed groups would have to commit to it.

Earlier, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Israel was ready to "significantly expand" its operation, ahead of talks with French foreign minister Laurent Fabius, who was on a whirlwind tour of the region.

"The army is prepared to significantly expand the operation," Mr Netanyahu said at the weekly cabinet meeting, expressing appreciation for what he said was world leaders' "understanding of Israel's right to self-defence."

Israeli cabinet minister Daniel Hershkowitz was in no mood to back down.

"There is no compromise on that," he said.

"Time has come to stop the whole story of shooting on civilians in the southern part of Israel. The goal is quite clear, and there will be no ceasefire before that goal is fully achieved."

Mr Fabius later said his country was willing to help broker a truce. "War is not an option, it is never an option ...There are two key words: urgency and ceasefire," he told journalists in Tel Aviv.

Mr Netanyahu said earlier that he had assured world leaders that Israel was doing its utmost to avoid causing civilian casualties.

"We are targeting and trying to be as surgical as possible," spokesman Mark Regev said.

Overnight Gaza health officials said 69 Palestinians - about half of them women and children - had been killed in Gaza since the Israeli offensive began, with hundreds wounded.

In scenes recalling Israel's 2008-2009 winter invasion of Gaza, tanks, artillery and infantry massed in field encampments along the fenced-off border.

Military convoys moved on roads in the area newly closed to civilian traffic.

A Palestinian blogger contacted by AM said people in the blockaded coastal enclave were "horrified" and "traumatised" by the Israeli offensive.

"It's very horrifying and people here are very traumatised," 21-year-old student Shaid Abu Salamah said.

"People never leave their houses, they are just locked inside waiting... fearing that [they are] going to be the next target.

"We are hearing thumpings all the time, all the time, 24 hours a day, we can hardly sleep and ambulances are 24 hours ferrying more casualties to the hospitals of Gaza.

"The hospitals of Gaza are crowded with injuries and bodies of the martyrs, of the killed people in Gaza.

"When the attacks started on Wednesday, the people in Gaza knew that it's going to be a long-term attack so they rushed to the supermarkets ... and they brought food supplies.

"But in this situation no-one has any appetite to eat or no-one feels like sleeping because it's horror, like you can't imagine the kind of horror we are living here, and civilians are attacked, children are dying.

"You see the images .. of the dead bodies that are being dug out from under the rubble. It's just too ugly, too inhumane, and Israel is taking, they are crimes against humanity."



ABC/wires

Topics: unrest-conflict-and-war, world-politics, palestinian-territory-occupied, israel

First posted