Israel says prefers diplomacy but ready to invade Gaza

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel bombed dozens more targets in the Gaza Strip on Monday and said that, while it was prepared to step up its offensive by sending in troops, it preferred a diplomatic solution that would end Palestinian rocket fire.

Egypt said a deal for a truce could be close, though by late evening there was no end to six days of heavy missile exchanges as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed his next steps with his inner circle of senior ministers.

U.S. President Barack Obama called Egypt's President Mohamed Mursi, who has been trying to use his influence with Hamas, his fellow Islamists who run Gaza, to broker a halt. Obama "underscored the necessity of Hamas ending rocket fire", the White House said.

The leader of Hamas, speaking in Cairo, said it was up to Israel to end a new conflict that he said it had started. Israel, which assassinated a Hamas military chief on Wednesday, says its air strikes are to halt Palestinian rocket attacks.

To Mursi and in a subsequent call to Netanyahu, Obama said he regretted the deaths of Israeli and Palestinian civilians.

Israeli attacks on the sixth day of fighting raised the number of Palestinian dead to 101, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said, listing 24 children among them. Subsequent deaths raised the toll in Gaza to 106. Hospital officials in the enclave said more than half of those killed were non-combatants. Three Israeli civilians died on Thursday in a rocket strike.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, touring the region in the hopes of helping to broker a peace deal, arrived in Cairo, where he met Egypt's foreign minister in preparation for talks with Mursi on Tuesday. He also plans to meet Netanyahu in Jerusalem.

With the power balances of the Middle East drastically reshaped by the Arab Spring during a first Obama term that began two days after Israel ended its last major Gaza offensive, the newly re-elected U.S. president faces testing choices to achieve Washington's hopes for peace and stability across the region.

ROCKET FIRE

Militants in the Gaza Strip fired 110 rockets at southern Israel on Monday, causing no casualties, police said. Israel said it had conducted 80 air strikes on the enclave. The figures meant a relative easing in ferocity - over 1,000 rockets have been fired in the six days, and 1,350 air strikes carried out.

For the second straight day, Israeli missiles blasted a tower block in the city of Gaza housing international media. Two people were killed there, one of them an Islamic Jihad militant.

Khaled Meshaal, exile leader of Hamas, said a truce was possible but the Islamist group, in charge of the Gaza Strip since 2007, would not accept Israeli demands and wanted Israel to halt its strikes first and lift its blockade of the enclave.

"Whoever started the war must end it," he told a news conference in Cairo, adding that Netanyahu, who faces an election in January, had asked for a truce, an assertion a senior Israeli official described as untrue.

Meshaal said Netanyahu feared the domestic consequences of a "land war" of the kind Israel launched four years ago: "He can do it, but he knows that it will not be a picnic and that it could be his political death and cost him the elections."

For Israel, Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon has said that "if there is quiet in the south and no rockets and missiles are fired at Israel's citizens, nor terrorist attacks engineered from the Gaza Strip, we will not attack".

Yaalon also said Israel wanted an end to guerrilla activity by militants from Gaza in the neighboring Egyptian Sinai peninsula.

Although 84 percent of Israelis support the current Gaza assault, according to a poll by Israel's Haaretz newspaper, only 30 percent want an invasion.

DIPLOMACY "PREFERRED"

"Israel is prepared and has taken steps, and is ready for a ground incursion which will deal severely with the Hamas military machine," an official close to Netanyahu told Reuters.

"We would prefer to see a diplomatic solution that would guarantee the peace for Israel's population in the south. If that is possible, then a ground operation would no longer be required. If diplomacy fails, we may well have no alternative but to send in ground forces," he added.

Egypt, where Mursi has his roots in Hamas's spiritual mentors the Muslim Brotherhood, is acting as a mediator in the biggest test yet of Cairo's 1979 peace treaty with Israel since the fall of Hosni Mubarak early last year.

"I think we are close, but the nature of this kind of negotiation, (means) it is very difficult to predict," Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil, who visited Gaza on Friday in a show of support for its people, said in an interview in Cairo for the Reuters Middle East Investment Summit.

Egypt has been hosting leaders of both Hamas and Islamic Jihad, a smaller armed faction.

Israeli media said a delegation from Israel had also been to Cairo for truce talks. A spokesman for Netanyahu's government declined comment on the matter.

Egypt's foreign minister, who met U.N. chief Ban on Monday, is expected to visit Gaza on Tuesday with a delegation of Arab ministers.

THOUSANDS MOURN FAMILY

Thousands turned out on Gaza's streets to mourn four children and five women who were among 11 people killed in an Israeli air strike that flattened a three-storey home the previous day.

The bodies were wrapped in Palestinian and Hamas flags. Echoes of explosions mixed with cries of grief and defiant chants of "God is greatest!".

Those deaths drew more international calls for an end to hostilities and could test Western support for an offensive that Israel billed as self-defense after years of cross-border rocket attacks.

Israel said it was investigating the strike that brought the home crashing down on the al-Dalu family, where the dead spanned four generations. Some Israeli newspapers said the house might have been targeted by mistake.

In scenes recalling Israel's 2008-2009 winter invasion of the coastal enclave, tanks, artillery and infantry have massed in field encampments along the sandy, fenced-off border.

Israel has also authorized the call-up of 75,000 military reservists, so far mobilizing around half that number.

The Gaza fighting adds to worries of world powers watching an already combustible region, where several Arab autocrats have been toppled in popular revolts in the past two years and a civil war in Syria threatens to spread beyond its borders.

In the absence of any prospect of permanent peace between Israel and Islamist factions such as Hamas, mediated deals for each to hold fire unilaterally have been the only formula for stemming bloodshed in the past.

Hamas and other groups in Gaza are sworn enemies of the Jewish state, which they refuse to recognize and seek to eradicate, claiming all Israeli territory as rightfully theirs.

Hamas won legislative elections in the Palestinian Territories in 2006. A year later, after the collapse of a unity government under President Mahmoud Abbas, it seized Gaza in a brief civil war with Abbas's forces.

(Writing by Jeffrey Heller, Dan Williams and Peter Graff; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)

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30% populace face respiratory disorder

INDORE: With rising pollution and increasing number of people getting hooked to smoking is leading to Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases (COPD). Nearly 25-30% of city population is afflicted by chest and respiratory disorders.

To curb this, many city doctors staged a street play at 56 dukan, Transport Nagar and Dewas Naka area on Monday. Doctors said that due to COPD, wind pipe gets shrink and people develop complications like cough and breathlessness. Dr S Z Jafri, chest and asthma specialist, said, "People are unaware of COPD. The number of people afflicted by the disease is on rise. Those above 40 years of age are at risk. The disease is considered to be fifth most fatal disease in the world."

To raise awareness about the diseases in masses, theatre artistes presented a street play and spread steps to avoid contraction of disease. A free breath screening was also done through breathometer and vitalograph equipment.

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New push for most in US to get at least 1 HIV test

WASHINGTON (AP) — There's a new push to make testing for the AIDS virus as common as cholesterol checks.

Americans ages 15 to 64 should get an HIV test at least once — not just people considered at high risk for the virus, an independent panel that sets screening guidelines proposed Monday.

The draft guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force are the latest recommendations that aim to make HIV screening simply a routine part of a check-up, something a doctor can order with as little fuss as a cholesterol test or a mammogram. Since 2006, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also has pushed for widespread, routine HIV screening.

Yet not nearly enough people have heeded that call: Of the more than 1.1 million Americans living with HIV, nearly 1 in 5 — almost 240,000 people — don't know it. Not only is their own health at risk without treatment, they could unwittingly be spreading the virus to others.

The updated guidelines will bring this long-simmering issue before doctors and their patients again — emphasizing that public health experts agree on how important it is to test even people who don't think they're at risk, because they could be.

"It allows you to say, 'This is a recommended test that we believe everybody should have. We're not singling you out in any way,'" said task force member Dr. Douglas Owens, of Stanford University and the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System.

And if finalized, the task force guidelines could extend the number of people eligible for an HIV screening without a copay in their doctor's office, as part of free preventive care under the Obama administration's health care law. Under the task force's previous guidelines, only people at increased risk for HIV — which includes gay and bisexual men and injecting drug users — were eligible for that no-copay screening.

There are a number of ways to get tested. If you're having blood drawn for other exams, the doctor can merely add HIV to the list, no extra pokes or swabs needed. Today's rapid tests can cost less than $20 and require just rubbing a swab over the gums, with results ready in as little as 20 minutes. Last summer, the government approved a do-it-yourself at-home version that's selling for about $40.

Free testing is available through various community programs around the country, including a CDC pilot program in drugstores in 24 cities and rural sites.

Monday's proposal also recommends:

—Testing people older and younger than 15-64 if they are at increased risk of HIV infection,

—People at very high risk for HIV infection should be tested at least annually.

—It's not clear how often to retest people at somewhat increased risk, but perhaps every three to five years.

—Women should be tested during each pregnancy, something the task force has long recommended.

The draft guidelines are open for public comment through Dec. 17.

Most of the 50,000 new HIV infections in the U.S. every year are among gay and bisexual men, followed by heterosexual black women.

"We are not doing as well in America with HIV testing as we would like," Dr. Jonathan Mermin, CDC's HIV prevention chief, said Monday.

The CDC recommends at least one routine test for everyone ages 13 to 64, starting two years younger than the task force recommended. That small difference aside, CDC data suggests fewer than half of adults under 65 have been tested.

"It can sometimes be awkward to ask your doctor for an HIV test," Mermin said — the reason making it routine during any health care encounter could help.

But even though nearly three-fourths of gay and bisexual men with undiagnosed HIV had visited some sort of health provider in the previous year, 48 percent weren't tested for HIV, a recent CDC survey found. Emergency rooms are considered a good spot to catch the undiagnosed, after their illnesses and injuries have been treated, but Mermin said only about 2 percent of ER patients known to be at increased risk were tested while there.

Mermin calls that "a tragedy. It's a missed opportunity."

___

Online:

Task force recommendation: http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org

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Serial Killer Targeting Middle Eastern Men in NY?

New York detectives are searching for four potential witnesses to the killing of a Brooklyn shop owner, the latest in a trio of murders in which all three victims were of Middle Eastern descent and all appear to have been shot by the same .22 caliber gun.

New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said today that the department will ask the FBI for a profiler to help identify who might have killed these three people.

Rahmatollah Vahidipour, an Iranian Jew, was killed inside the She She boutique in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn on Friday night, sustaining three gunshot wounds to the head and torso. The 78-year-old's body was dragged to the back of the store and covered with merchandise, WABC reported.

Police said that shell casings from the gun match the casings found at two other murder this summer.

In addition, the killings were within a five mile radius of each other, each occurred at a small shop that lacked security cameras and each victim was over 50, police said. It was also not clear whether the victims were robbed.

Vahidipour's body was discovered in his boutique at 7:11 p.m. The four people caught on video in the vicinity of the area between 6 p.m. and 6: 52 p.m. on Friday are not considered suspects in the crime, police said.

"Detectives want to question them about what they may have observed because of the time of day and their proximity to the homicide scene," Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne said in a statement.

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Police said that two of the potential witnesses, a man and a woman, were captured on video Friday evening running one after the other south on Flatbush Avenue, a half block south of the crime scene. The woman can be seen taking off her green jacket, which police said was later recovered in a nearby garbage can.

Police indicated they have a strong interest in talking to a white male seen carrying a duffle bag in one of several photos and a video they released.

Ballistic tests performed by the NYPD show that the gun used in Friday's homicide was also used in two recent south Brooklyn shooting deaths this summer.

Clothing store owner Mohamed Gebeli, an Egyptian Muslim, was killed inside Valentino Fashion in Bay Ridge on July 6. Gebeli was shot in the neck and was found with several pieces of clothing on top of him. Police said $383 in receipts was missing, but $1,500 was found inside a cabinet.

On Aug. 2, Isaac Kadare, a Jew who was of Egyptian descent, was found dead at the Amazing 99 Cents Deal store that he owned in Bensonhurst. Kadare had been shot in the temple and had three stab wounds to the neck. His face was covered with an aluminum tray and bleach had been splashed on his pants. It wasn't clear if anything had been taken from Kadare's store.

Police said they are not sure if the homicides were racially motivated.

State Sen. Eric Adams, a former New York City police officer, suggested Sunday that the string of homicides could be the work of a serial killer.

"We don't want the city to be engulfed in fear based on the actions of a potential serial killer who appears to be targeting men of Middle Eastern descent," Adams said. "This person must be apprehended."

Police said that no evidence has yet been recovered to indicate bias crime in Vahidipour's murder. Still, personnel from the NYPD Hate Crime Task Force were added Sunday to a group of detectives investigating the three homicides "for their expertise."

Former FBI agent and ABC News consultant Brad Garrett said the common thread between the three homicides could be that as shop owners working alone, they were all vulnerable.

"The question clearly is motive. It's going to be robbery, hate, or revenge," Garrett said. "If the motive is robbery, a lot of violent robbers shoot the people they rob. If this is a hate crime, he went in there to do what he did, to kill the owner and have enough time to get away. If that's the case, I think it's reasonable to think all three of these guys were profiled previously."

Rewards of $22,000 in each of the homicides are being offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the crimes.

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Motor Racing: Red Bull worried by alternator failures

AUSTIN, Texas: Red Bull team chief Christian Horner admits their latest alternator failure, suffered by Australian Mark Webber, in Sunday's United States Grand Prix is a worry ahead of the drivers' title showdown in Brazil next weekend.

Webber's alternator failure was the team's third this season and came in the race in which they celebrated clinching a third consecutive constructors' championship.

Webber was forced to retire from third place on lap 17 and the disappointment not only put a damper on their celebrations in Texas, but also forced Renault to announce on Monday that they will supply their latest specification alternator for the Interlagos race.

"It is just a worry, full stop," said Horner. "Unfortunately it is the third alternator (failure in a race) that we have had, and obviously there have been other failures in other cars. We need to get it back to look in to it.

"I think the new version has raced on other engine cycles (at other teams), so hopefully that is what we will have for Brazil."

Renault's head of trackside operations Remi Taffin explained their plans for Brazil.

He said: "It is very simple. We go for the new spec. It has passed all the tests."

On Sunday, at the Circuit of the Americas, Red Bull elected not to use the newer specification, which was raced by other Renault-powered teams, because it felt safer using the older specification.

Asked why that decision had been made if the newer units had passed all reliability tests, Taffin said: "Because they are human beings and at some point as humans they have some feelings.

"It was a common decision, so we put everything on the table and we decided altogether we should go that way. We had everything to fit either the old or new design.

"But the feeling was generally that there is some sense to keep on using something that we have known for years with low mileage and stuff like that, even if we had a new solution that we knew had gone through all the tests.

"Maybe it is a bit more difficult to understand, but put yourself in the situation where you have to make a decision. Sometimes you go into a shop and there are two different things and your head says you should buy this one but your heart says you should buy the other one."

Defending champion German Sebastian Vettel, who holds a 13-point lead in this year's title race ahead of fellow two-time champion Spaniard Fernando Alonso of Ferrari ahead of this week's showdown, retired from the lead of the European Grand Prix in Valencia with an alternator failure and had repeat failures at the Italian Grand Prix during practice and in the race.

It was after Monza that Renault reverted the team back to older specification parts that had proved to be trouble-free while it worked on updates.

- AFP/fa

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Israeli air strike kills 11 civilians in Gaza: Hamas

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli missile killed at least 11 Palestinian civilians including four children in Gaza on Sunday, medical officials said, apparently an attack on a top militant that brought a three-storey home crashing down.

International pressure for a ceasefire seemed certain to mount in response to the deadliest single incident in five days of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel and Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip.

Egypt has taken the lead in trying to broker a ceasefire and Israeli media said a delegation from Israel had been to Cairo for talks on ending the fighting, although a government spokesman declined to comment on the matter.

Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi met Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal and Islamic Jihad's head Ramadan Shallah as part of the mediation efforts, but a presidency statement did not say if they were conclusive.

Izzat Risheq, a close aide to Meshaal, wrote in a Facebook message that Hamas would agree to a ceasefire only after Israel "stops its aggression, ends its policy of targeted assassinations and lifts the blockade of Gaza".

Listing Israel's terms for ceasing fire, Moshe Yaalon, a deputy to the prime minister, wrote on Twitter: "If there is quiet in the south and no rockets and missiles are fired at Israel's citizens, nor terrorist attacks engineered from the Gaza Strip, we will not attack."

Gaza health officials said 72 Palestinians , 21 of them children and several women have been killed in Gaza since Israel's offensive began. Hundreds have been wounded.

Israel gave off signs of a possible ground invasion of the Hamas-run enclave as the next stage in its offensive, billed as a bid to stop Palestinian rocket fire into the Jewish state. It also spelt out its conditions for a truce.

U.S. President Barack Obama said that while Israel had a right to defend itself against the salvoes, it would be "preferable" to avoid a military thrust into the Gaza Strip, a narrow, densely populated coastal territory. Such an assault would risk high casualties and an international outcry.

A spokesman for the Hamas-run Interior Ministry said 11 people, all of them civilians, were killed when an Israeli missile flattened the home of the Dalu family. Medics said four women and four children were among the dead.

Israel's chief military spokesman said Yihia Abayah, a senior commander of rocket operations in the Gaza Strip, had been the target.

The spokesman, Yoav Mordechai, told Israel's Channel 2 television he did not know whether Abayah was killed, "but the outcome was that there were civilian casualties". He made no direct mention of the destroyed dwelling.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier that he had assured world leaders that Israel was doing its utmost to avoid causing civilian casualties in the military showdown with Hamas.

"The massacre of the Dalu family will not pass without punishment," Hamas's armed wing said in a statement.

VIOLENCE

In other air raids on Sunday, two Gaza City media buildings were hit, witnesses said. Eight journalists were wounded and facilities belonging to Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV as well as Britain's Sky News were damaged.

An employee of the Beirut-based al Quds television station lost his leg in the attack, local medics said.

The Israeli military said the strike targeted a rooftop "transmission antenna used by Hamas to carry out terror activity", and that journalists in the building had effectively been used as human shields by Gaza's rulers.

For their part, Gaza militants launched dozens of rockets into Israel and targeted its commercial capital, Tel Aviv, for a fourth day, once in the morning and another after dark.

Israel's "Iron Dome" missile shield shot down all three rockets, but falling debris from the daytime interception hit a car, which caught fire. Its driver was not hurt.

In scenes recalling Israel's 2008-2009 winter invasion of Gaza, tanks, artillery and infantry massed in field encampments along the sandy, fenced-off border. Military convoys moved on roads in the area newly closed to civilian traffic.

Netanyahu said Israel was ready to widen its offensive.

"We are exacting a heavy price from Hamas and the terrorist organizations and the Israel Defence Forces are prepared for a significant expansion of the operation," he said at a cabinet meeting, giving no further details.

The Israeli military said 544 rockets fired from Gaza have hit Israel since Wednesday, killing three civilians and wounding dozens. Some 302 were intercepted and 99 failed to reach Israel and landed inside the Gaza Strip, it added.

Israel's declared goal is to deplete Gaza arsenals and force the Islamist Hamas to stop rocket fire that has bedeviled Israeli border towns for years and is now displaying greater range, putting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in the crosshairs.

Israel withdrew settlers from Gaza in 2005 and two years later Hamas took control of the impoverished enclave, which the Israelis have kept under blockade.

OBAMA CAUTIONS AGAINST GROUND CAMPAIGN

At a news conference during a visit to the Thai capital Bangkok, Obama said Israel has "every right to expect that it does not have missiles fired into its territory".

He added: "If this can be accomplished without a ramping up of military activity in Gaza that is preferable. That's not just preferable for the people of Gaza, it's also preferable for Israelis because if Israeli troops are in Gaza they're much more at risk of incurring fatalities or being wounded," he said.

Obama said he had been in regular contact with Egyptian and Turkish leaders - to secure their mediation in bringing about a halt to rocket barrages by Hamas and other Islamist militants.

"We're going to have to see what kind of progress we can make in the next 24, 36, 48 hours," he added.

Diplomatic efforts continued on Sunday when French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius met Israeli officials and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.

"It is absolutely necessary that we move urgently towards a ceasefire, and that's where France can be useful," Fabius told French television, adding that war must be avoided.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will be in Egypt on Monday for talks with Mursi, the foreign ministry in Cairo said. U.N. diplomats earlier said Ban was expected in Israel and Egypt this week to push for an end to the fighting.

Israel's operation has so far drawn Western support for what U.S. and European leaders have called its right to self-defence, but there was also a growing number of appeals from them to seek an end to the hostilities.

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Warring Thackeray cousins unite in grief, but briefly

MUMBAI: Long-simmering differences between the Thackeray cousins came to the fore on Sunday, with Raj leaving his uncle's funeral procession mid-way in a huff after a spat with Uddhav.

A key MNS functionary said his party chief was deliberately kept away from the family rituals. "Rajsaheb was not allowed to be a pallbearer, which is his undeniable right as he is Balasaheb's nephew."

That he was not to be one of the pallbearers was conveyed to Raj when he reached Matoshree earlier in the day. "He was told that Shiv Sena leaders and deputy leaders would take turns to carry the casket," the MNS functionary said. "This was Matoshree's way of rebuffing Rajsaheb and reminding him that while he may be a family member, in the Sena, which he quit in 2005, he is still persona non-grata."

As the funeral procession made its way to Shivaji Park, Raj walked ahead, hoping that Uddhav would join him. "The cousins were supposed to walk together, preceding the cortege," the MNS worker said.

However, Uddhav scrambled on to the truck carrying Bal Thackeray's body, leaving Raj to walk alone. A miffed Raj hopped into his vehicle and returned to his residence.

Brothers' spat sign of things to come?

The spat between Uddhav and Raj on Sunday, even as Bal Thackeray's funeral was under way, is a clear indication that the possibility of a thaw between the cousins is bleak, say political observers.

Left to walk alone in the funeral procession, Raj Thackeray abandoned the course mid-way and returned home late afternoon. On reaching his residence, Raj shut himself in his study and watched the funeral procession on TV, it is reliably learned. He told mediapersons who called him to know his whereabouts that he would be at Shivaji Park for the cremation. Raj's wife, Sharmila, though, accompanied the cortege with Uddhav, his wife Rashmi and their children.

Later in the evening, he attended the final rites along with Uddhav and his brother Jaidev at Shivaji Park.

Raj was made aware of the lurking hostility in Matoshree earlier last week when he called on the fast-sinking Sena patriarch. "Things became immensely embarrassing for Rajsaheb. He left Matoshree and sat in his car which was parked nearby for nearly two hours. He politely turned down Smitatai's (Thackeray) suggestion that he should retire to her room in Matoshree," said an MNS corporator.

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EU drug regulator OKs Novartis' meningitis B shot

LONDON (AP) — Europe's top drug regulator has recommended approval for the first vaccine against meningitis B, made by Novartis AG.

There are five types of bacterial meningitis. While vaccines exist to protect against the other four, none has previously been licensed for type B meningitis. In Europe, type B is the most common, causing 3,000 to 5,000 cases every year.

Meningitis mainly affects infants and children. It kills about 8 percent of patients and leaves others with lifelong consequences such as brain damage.

In a statement on Friday, Andrin Oswald of Novartis said he is "proud of the major advance" the company has made in developing its vaccine Bexsero. It is aimed at children over two months of age, and Novartis is hoping countries will include the shot among the routine ones for childhood diseases such as measles.

Novartis said the immunization has had side effects such as fever and redness at the injection site.

Recommendations from the European Medicines Agency are usually adopted by the European Commission. Novartis also is seeking to test the vaccine in the U.S.

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Officials: Israeli Strike Kills 11 Civilians in Gaza

An Israeli missile ripped through a two-story home in a residential area of Gaza City on Sunday, killing at least 11 civilians, including four young children and an 81-year-old woman, in the single deadliest attack of Israel's offensive against Islamic militants.

The bloodshed was likely to raise pressure on Israel to end the fighting, even as it pledged to intensify the offensive by striking the homes of wanted militants. High numbers of civilian casualties in an offensive four years ago led to fierce criticism and condemnation of Israel.

In all, 73 Palestinians, including 37 civilians, have been killed in the five-day onslaught. Three Israeli civilians have also died from Palestinian rocket fire.

President Barack Obama said he was in touch with players across the region in hopes of halting the fighting, while also warning of the risks of Israel expanding its air assault into a ground war.

"We're going to have to see what kind of progress we can make in the next 24, 36, 48 hours," Obama said during a visit in Thailand.

On the ground, there were no signs of any letup in the fighting as Israel announced it was widening the offensive to target the military commanders of the ruling Hamas group.

The Israeli military carried out dozens of airstrikes throughout the day, and naval forces bombarded targets along Gaza's Mediterranean coast. Many of the attacks focused on homes where militant leaders or weapons were believed to be hidden.

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Palestinian militants continued to barrage Israel with rockets, firing more than 100 on Sunday, and setting off air raid sirens across the southern part of the country. Some 40 rockets were intercepted by Israel's U.S.-financed "Iron Dome" rocket-defense system, including two that targeted the metropolis of Tel Aviv.

Israel's decision to step up its attacks in Gaza marked a new and risky phase of the operation, given the likelihood of civilian casualties in the densely populated territory of 1.6 million Palestinians. Israel launched the offensive Wednesday in what it said was an effort to end months of intensifying rocket fire from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

In the day's deadliest violence, the Israeli navy fired at a home where it said a top wanted militant was hiding. The missile struck the home of the Daloo family in Gaza City, reducing the structure to rubble.

Frantic rescuers, bolstered by bulldozers, pulled the limp bodies of children from the ruins of the house, including a toddler and a 5-year-old, as survivors and bystanders screamed in grief. Later, the bodies of the children were laid out in the morgue of Gaza City's Shifa Hospital.

Among the 11 dead were four small children and five women, including an 81-year-old, Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra said.

More than a dozen homes of Hamas commanders or families linked to Hamas were struck on Sunday. Though most were empty — their inhabitants having fled to shelter — at least three had families in them. Al-Kidra said 20 of 27 people killed Sunday were civilians, mostly women and children.

Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, said that "the Israeli people will pay the price" for the killing of civilians.

Israel sought to place the blame on militants, saying they were intentionally operating in places inhabited by civilians. The military has released videos and images of what it says are militants firing rockets from mosques, schools and public buildings.

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Iron Dome intercepts two rockets over Tel Aviv

TEL AVIV: Israel's vaunted Iron Dome anti-missile system on Sunday shot down two rockets over Tel Aviv as sirens wailed across the city, in the fourth such interception in one day, police said.

"Sirens sounded in Tel Aviv, and the Iron Dome shot down two rockets," said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.

"There were no reports of injuries or damage on ground level in Tel Aviv or (the surrounding region of) Gush Dan," he added.

Sunday was the fourth straight day sirens sounded across Tel Aviv. Earlier in the day, Israeli police confirmed two rockets had been intercepted over the city by Iron Dome.

Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said they launched a Fajr-5 rocket at Tel Aviv in response to the "occupation's massacre."

Earlier on Sunday, at least seven members of the same family, four of them children, were among nine people killed when an Israeli missile destroyed a family home in Gaza City.

Iranian-made Fajr 5 rockets have a range of up to 75 kilometres (46 miles).

On Thursday, Hamas said it had developed its own longer-range rocket, the M75, which was used to target Jerusalem.

- AFP/fa

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