Three Palestinian family members, including a six-year-old girl, were killed on Saturday in an air strike on Gaza City as Israel rejected a call by Hamas premier Ismail Haniya for a mutual ceasefire.
The girl, her elder brother and her mother were killed in the air raid which according to an army spokesperson targeted a group of militants east of Gaza City.
Despite initial denials, the Israeli army later confirmed carrying out an airstrike in the neighbourhood of Sejayun.
”We are currently examining the exact details of the strike,” an army source told Agence France-Presse.
Four more Palestinians were killed earlier as Israeli forces shifted the focus of their Gaza campaign to end militant rocket fire and free a captured soldier to the seaside strip’s eastern frontier.
As Israel pushed on into Gaza, officials brushed aside Haniya’s call for a ”return to a situation of calm on the basis of a halt to all military operations by both sides”.
”We do not hold negotiations with terrorists. They must first return the kidnapped soldier unharmed and cease their fire,” said an official in Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s office.
”We will decide on our next moves according to the steps taken by the Palestinian government,” he said, asking not to be named.
Haniya stressed that his Hamas government was determined to solve the problem through diplomatic channels in a ”peaceful” manner.
”It is necessary that Israel halt its military operation in the Gaza Strip and withdraw its forces,” said a statement from Haniya.
”More efforts are required from all parties to resolve the current crisis in order to bring an end to the Israeli aggression and resolve the question of the Israeli soldier through serious negotiations,” it added.
A Hamas spokesperson slammed Israel for brushing aside the Hamas ceasefire offer.
”The Israeli rejection is wrong,” said Ghazi Hamad. ”This initiative must be seized on in order to find a suitable solution.”
Earlier, dozens of Israeli tanks backed by helicopter gunships and drones passed through the Karni and Nahal Oz crossings, advancing one kilometre to the outskirts of Gaza City where clashes broke out.
Armoured vehicles fired missiles, killing a member of the Palestinian security forces in Zeitun, while three more Palestinians were reported killed by Israeli tank shelling in the nearby Shujaya neighborhood.
Israeli armoured vehicles took up positions in farmland on Gaza’s eastern border and assembled in industrial areas.
A security official at the Karni industrial zone beside the crossing said that four tanks had blocked off the area where goods are stored.
Israeli units meanwhile pulled back from northern Gaza, three days after launching a deadly incursion in the area, Israeli and Palestinian sources said.
On Thursday, Israel sent troops deep into the northern Gaza Strip, occupying a buffer zone in the territory from which it withdrew last September.
Israel has vowed to use everything in its power to increase the pressure on the embattled Hamas-led government to free 19-year-old Corporal Gilad Shalit and to stop rocket attacks.
Another Hamas militant died from wounds suffered during a gunfight with Israeli forces on Thursday.
Forty Palestinians and one Israeli soldier have been killed since Israel launched its massive military operation in Gaza late on Wednesday.
As efforts to reach a breakthrough in the crisis stalled, Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas left the Gaza Strip for the first time in two weeks to travel to his home in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
He has called on the international community to stop Israel’s ”inhumane aggression” to give mediators a chance to free Shalit.
United Nations chief Kofi Annan called for an immediate halt to what he called Israel’s ”disproportionate use of force” but added that Palestinian militants should nonetheless release the captured soldier.
”These measures are an absolute prerequisite for defusing the tensions which are escalating every day,” Annan insisted.
Hamas — whose government offices have been targets of Israeli missile strikes — warned that the assault was complicating the fate of Shalit, who it said was being well looked-after.
”Soldier Gilad is being well treated, in a humane manner in keeping with the values of our religion,” said the movement, whose armed wing claimed joint responsibility for the June 25 attack in which Shalit was seized.
”Continued Zionist crimes will only harden the Palestinian side even more,” it warned.
The UN Security Council debated a draft resolution demanding that Israel withdraw from Gaza immediately and release detained Palestinian officials, although the US, Israel’s closest ally, described the text as ”unbalanced”. – Sapa-AFP