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But the strikes failed to staunch the rocket fire from Hamas, which unleashed its full arsenal of long-range missiles as far as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

The exchanges were matched by bellicose political language on either side.

Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, accused Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza.

That claim was brushed aside by Shimon Peres, Israel’s president, who accused Hamas of starting the conflict by firing rockets. “We asked them to stop. We waited one day, two days, three days and they continued, and they spread their fire on more areas in Israel,” he said.

He added that a ground offensive on Gaza “may happen quite soon.” Referring to rockets being fired from Gaza, he added: “If they will stop for example tonight, there won’t be any ground entrance – but if they will continue, sooner or later this will be the response.”

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Despite the rising number of dead, diplomatic pressure on Israel has so far been relatively light.

The European Union, through the office of its foreign policy chief, Baroness Ashton, condemned “indiscriminate” rocket fire from the Gaza Strip and deplored “the growing number of civilian casualties, reportedly among them children, caused by Israeli retaliatory fire.”

But the calls fell far short of the international chorus of criticism that accompanied Israel’s previous incursions into Gaza in 2008 and 2012. That, however, may be due to the relative absence of any single major tragedy so far to mobilise international opinion around – unlike in 2008, when the opening day of Operation Cast Lead saw several dozen Gazan police cadets killed by an Israeli drone that strafed their graduation ceremony.