Hamas called on the United Nations on Friday to put an end to the "crime of the recent attacks on Gaza," referring to the stepped up Israeli air strikes on the Strip which have come in the wake of increased rocket fire, the pan-Arab daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported.

The report, which was carried by Israeli media, also said that Taher al-Nunu, a spokesman for the Hamas regime, called on the Arab League to work urgently to stop "recent Israeli aggression."

Open gallery view An area bombed by the Israel Air Force in Rafah, Gaza Strip on Thursday, March 24, 2011. Credit: AP

Israel must be prevented from "exploiting the instability in the region and world to carry out massacres against the Palestinian people," Taher said.

Tensions along the Israel-Gaza border have been extremely tense over the course of the past week, with an increase in both rocket fire from Gaza and retaliatory air strikes by Israel on the Strip.

In the most recent exchange, the Israel Air Force bombed an arms depot in northern Gaza, which according to Palestinian sources, belong to the military wing of Hamas.

The attack was carried out around 8:30 P.M. Thursday local time, after two rockets and several mortars fired from Gaza landed deep into Israel earlier in the day.

In a separate report carried by Israeli media, contacts from Hamas and Israel are supposedly meeting with a third party in order to bring about a reduction in tensions between the sides. The report, which cannot be confirmed, came from the London based pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat.

Despite the Israeli strikes on the Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Thursday that if Hamas chooses to escalate cross-border tensions, Israel's response will be measured.