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Gaza: At least 32 Palestinian civilians and militants have been killed in Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip in the past 48 hours.
Israeli forces killed four Palestinian boys playing football on Thursday, medical workers said, during intensified attacks in response to the death of an Israeli in a rocket strike.
The deaths of the boys, aged 10, 12, 13 and 15, near the town of Jabalya, raised to 24 the number of Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip over the past two days.
"We are at the height of the battle," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in Tokyo, where he met US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice before her visit next week to Israel and the occupied West Bank to try to push along peace talks.
Olmert vowed to make Hamas militants pay a heavy price for rocket attacks despite US concerns about civilians in the Gaza Strip. "I explained to the secretary of state that we won't end our battle," Olmert said. "We will make the terrorists pay a very heavy price."
Twelve Palestinians - the four boys, seven militants and a civilian - were killed in air strikes or by missiles fired from the ground on Thursday, the medical workers said. A Hamas militant died of wounds suffered overnight.
The father of two of the youths wept in a Gaza hospital, unable to speak. Medical workers said the boys were playing soccer when an Israeli missile struck.
A six-month old Palestinian baby was killed in an Israeli air strike on Wednesday.
Hours earlier, five senior Hamas men died in an attack from the air and a rocket fired by the Islamist group at the Israeli border town of Sderot killed an Israeli civilian, the first such death since May.
Also on Thursday, an Israeli missile struck a police post about 150 metres from the home of Hamas leader Esmail Haniya in the Gaza Strip, but officials from the Islamist group said the house was not damaged.
Although Israel has said it may start killing senior Hamas leaders, the air strike did not appear to have targeted Haniya.
The Israeli military said 21 rockets and 12 mortar bombs were fired from the Gaza Strip on Thursday. Three people were wounded and Israel's internal security minister, visiting Sderot, scrambled for cover as a siren sounded.
Nabeel Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is negotiating with Israel, said in a statement its military actions "meant only one thing: the Israeli government ... aims to destroy the peace process".
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