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The threat to Israel followed a warning from Hamas’s military wing, the Izzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, that it would fire on its neighbour’s main international airport, near Tel Aviv, in the next phase of its rocket offensive.

“The armed wing of the Hamas movement has decided to respond to the Israeli aggression, and we warn you against carrying out flights to Ben-Gurion airport, which will be one of our targets today because it also hosts a military airbase,” the brigades said in a statement.

Diplomatic efforts to end the conflict and prevent further escalation seemed to be falling on stony ground, despite an offer by President Barack Obama to help to mediate a ceasefire.

While Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority leader, urged the UN to negotiate a truce, Egypt – which was being asked to mediate, having helped to broker a ceasefire that ended an earlier conflict in November 2012 – accused both sides of being “stubborn.”

Israeli air strikes killed a further 11 people in Gaza Thursday, including five members of the same family in the southern town of Rafah who died when their house was struck by a missile. The latest casualties brought the number killed to at least 103 – most of them non-combatants, including at least 23 children, according to Gaza health officials – since Israel launched Operation Protective Edge this week with the aim of stopping rockets being fired by militants.

There was little sign yesterday of that goal having been achieved as missiles continued to hit Israeli towns and cities. One struck a petrol station in Ashdod, 20 miles from Gaza, injuring eight people, one of them severely. Some 53 missiles landed in Israel after midnight on Thursday, while another 18 were stopped by the Iron Dome anti-missile defence, the Israeli army said. It said 460 missiles had struck Israeli territory since Tuesday, with Iron Dome shooting down another 121.

There were concerns of a wider conflict when three missiles from Lebanon landed near a kibbutz in Israel’s Galilee region. So far the only Israeli casualty has been an elderly woman who collapsed rushing to a bomb shelter and later died.

The Daily Telegraph