Palestinian security forces keep watch during a Hamas demonstration in the West Bank city of Hebron
yesterday as thousands held angry protests in east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank. — AFP

GAZA — The civilian death toll climbed in Israel’s air offensive against the Gaza Strip yesterday and Palestinian activists vowed revenge for the killing of a senior Hamas leader and his family. There was no sign of a ceasefire on the seventh day of the conflict, in which at least 425 Palestinians have been killed and over 2,000 wounded. A United Nations agency said the civilian death toll in Gaza was over 25 per cent of the total killed in the violence. A leading Palestinian human rights group put it at 40 per cent. Of the six people reported killed yesterday in over 30 Israeli air strikes, five were civilians, local medics said.

One missile killed three Palestinian children aged between eight and 12 as they played on a street near the town of Khan Yunis in the south of the strip. One was decapitated. “These injuries are not survivable injuries,” said Madth Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor at Gaza’s Shifa hospital who could not save a boy who had both feet blown off. “This is a murder. This is a child,” he said. Hamas activists earlier fired rockets at Israel’s ancient port of Ashkelon, one of which blew out windows in an apartment building. Another house took a direct hit from a long-range missile later in the day, and cars were set ablaze. There were no casualties reported.

Israel’s armoured forces remained massed on the Gaza frontier in preparation for a possible ground invasion, despite international calls for a halt to the conflict. An Israeli naval vessel lying offshore fired at a greenhouse in southern Gaza. The White House said yesterday that Israel must decide whether to go into the Gaza Strip with ground forces. In Gaza City, a few hundred foreign passport holders boarded buses in the pre-dawn murk to quit the Strip, with the help of the International Committee of the Red Cross, their governments and Israeli compliance. “The situation is very bad. We are afraid for our children,” said Ilona Hamdiya, a woman from Moldova married to a Palestinian.

They left behind 1.5 million Palestinians unable to escape the conflict, a city facing another day of bombs, missiles, flickering electricity, queues for bread Bracing for protests and retaliatory violence, Israel sealed off the occupied West Bank to deny entry to most Palestinians and beefed up security at checkpoints. There were protests by Palestinians in West Bank cities. Protesters stoned soldiers at checkpoints and some were wounded by rubber bullets.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     — Reuters