One of the top Hamas leaders in Gaza has been killed in an air strike, Hamas and Israeli officials have said.
Said Siyam, the Hamas interior minister, was killed in an air raid on his brother’s home near Gaza City.
Earlier, Israeli troops and tanks moved closer into the heart of Gaza City, prompting fierce gun battles with fighters from Hamas.
The UN’s relief agency, Unrwa, said part of its HQ in Gaza caught fire after being hit by Israeli shells.

Rockets fired from Lebanon struck Israel on Wednesday for the second time in a week while its Gaza offensive ground on, but there was no immediate sign the incident would escalate into wider violence. There was no initial claim of responsibility for the attack, which triggered warning sirens in parts of northern Israel, and police said no one was hurt.
On Thursday, a salvo hit northern Israel but Lebanese and Israeli officials were quick to play down that incident, blaming not the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement, an ally of Gaza’s Hamas, …

Israel and Hamas vowed to keep fighting on Sunday, ignoring international calls to stop the Gaza conflict which entered a 16th day with heavy clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian guerrillas.
Hamas’s leader in exile, Khaled Meshaal, said his Islamist group would not consider a truce until Israel ended its military offensive and lifted a blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Israel sent tanks deeper into the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave and threatened to intensify its air and ground assaults against militants who fired more rockets into the Jewish state.

The Israeli government will weigh the future of its military operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, as mounting casualties among Palestinian civilians increased pressure for a truce.
At least 40 Palestinians were killed when Israeli forces struck a school run by the United Nations in Gaza, a UN official said. Israel, which struck at least 40 more Hamas targets overnight, said it responded after its soldiers were fired at from the building.
The school deaths yesterday added urgency to diplomatic efforts aimed at reaching a cease-fire as the conflict entered its …

Fighting intensified on the northern outskirts of Gaza City yesterday as a Hamas leader warned that the Islamists would kill Jewish children anywhere in the world in revenge for Israel’s devastating assault.
“They have legitimised the murder of their own children by killing the children of Palestine,” Mahmoud Zahar said in a televised broadcast recorded at a secret location. “They have legitimised the killing of their people all over the world by killing our people.”
Mr Zahar made his first appearance since Israel launched its offensive. Dressed in a dark suit, he …

A ceasefire in the Gaza strip could be secured within days if the smuggling routes that supply arms and money to Hamas can be blocked off, Tony Blair said today as Israel moved its forces deeper into southern Gaza.
But the entire region should brace itself for a “protracted campaign” if the border between the Gaza strip and Egypt – through which Hamas militants are supplied – is not secured, Mr Blair warned.
Israel today demanded that Hamas be prevented from rearming as a main condition of any ceasefire. Mark Regev, …

Israeli mortar rounds blasted a United Nations-run school that had been converted into a refugee shelter for hundreds of Palestinians displaced by the ten-day war in Gaza, killing more than 40 people today.
It was one of three UN schools hit by Israeli ordnance today. The strike against the Fakhora school in the northern town of Jabaliya was the deadliest single attack of an already blood-soaked offensive.
Israeli army officials said that their forces had been targeted by Hamas mortar fire from within the school compound. They named two alleged Hamas …

PUTRAJAYA: Malaysia is making an immediate donation of US$1 million (RM3.5 million) as humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said the money had been channelled through non-profit medical relief organisation Mercy Malaysia to deliver relief supplies to the Palestinian victims.
The Foreign Ministry, he said, had reopened its Fund for Palestine to receive and coordinate the collection of assistance from Malaysians.

GENEVA (AFP) — People wounded in fighting in the Gaza Strip are dying because ambulances cannot reach them, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Monday.
“The situation is extremely dangerous and the coordination of ambulance services is very complex because of the incessant attacks and military operations,” ICRC spokeswoman Dorothea Krimitsas said in Geneva.
“Wounded people have died while waiting for Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances,” she added.
“In some other cases, ambulances cannot reach the wounded at all because of the ongoing fighting and shelling.”

The Syrian cabinet decided on Monday to launch a public donation campaign to support the people of Gaza, the official SANA news agency reported.
In a weekly cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Mohammad Naji Ottri, the ministers vowed to bolster their country’s support campaigns and aid convoys to Gaza, which already amounted to 280 tons of aid in various kind.
They also underlined the efforts led by President Bashar al-Assad to end the Israeli aggression on Gaza, break the siege, and open crossing points to deliver food, medicine, medical supplies and …