Gaza war rages on, Hamas says Israel tried to kill it's military chief

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli air strike
in Gaza killed the wife and infant son of Hamas's
military leader, Mohammed Deif, the group said,
calling it an attempt to assassinate him after a
ceasefire collapsed.
Palestinians launched more than 180 rockets on
Tuesday and Wednesday, mainly at southern
Israel, with some intercepted by the Iron Dome
anti-missile system, the military said. No
casualties were reported on the Israeli side.
Egypt, which has been trying to broker a long-
term ceasefire in indirect Israeli-Palestinian talks,
said it would continue contacts with both sides,
whose delegates left Cairo after the hostilities
resumed on Tuesday.
But there appeared to be no end in sight to
violence that shattered a 10-day period of calm,
the longest break from fighting since Israel
launched its Gaza offensive on July 8 with the
declared aim of ending rocket fire into its
territory.
Israeli aircraft have carried out more than 100
strikes in the Gaza Strip since Tuesday, Defence
Minister Moshe Ya'alon said, the military adding
it was "targeting terror sites".
Hamas and medical officials said 23 people had
died in the latest Israeli raids, including Deif's
wife and seven-month-old son. Deif is widely
believed to be masterminding the Islamist group's
military campaign from underground bunkers.
A Hamas official said Deif, head of Hamas's Izz
el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, had not used the
targeted house, from whose rubble the bodies of
three members of the family that lived there were
also pulled out.
Abu Ubaida, a spokesman for Hamas's armed
wing, said in a televised statement addressing
Israel "you have failed and you have missed" Deif
in the attack.
Chanting "Qassam, bomb Tel Aviv!", thousands of
Palestinians later attended the funeral of Deif's
wife and son in Jabalya refugee camp. The
woman's mother told reporters she wished she
had "another 100 daughters" to offer Deif in
marriage.
Accusing Israel of opening a "gateway to hell",
Hamas fired rockets at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem
late on Tuesday, demonstrating the Islamist
movement could still reach Israel's heartland
despite heavy Israeli bombardments in the five-
week conflict.
There was no confirmation from Israel that it had
tried to kill Deif, who has been targeted in air
strikes at least four times since the mid-1990s.
Israel holds him responsible for the deaths of
dozens of its citizens in suicide bombings.
"ALL OPTIONS OPEN"
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declined to
say whether Deif had been targeted, but he
reaffirmed Israel's longstanding policy of
considering militant leaders as legitimate targets,
adding that "none are immune" from attack.
Netanyahu said Israel's Gaza campaign could last
for a while. "This will be a continuous campaign,"
he told a news conference in Tel Aviv, giving a
vague description of Israel's goals as seeking
"calm and safety" for Israeli citizens.
Ya'alon, his defence chief, added that "all options
are open, including renewed ground operations" in
Gaza.
Netanyahu compared Hamas Islamists to Islamic
State militants operating in Iraq and Syria, calling
them "branches of the same tree" and accusing
both groups of acting with "savagery" by killing
and targeting attacks against civilians.
Abu Ubaida, the Hamas military spokesman, said
the group would target Israeli public sites such
as soccer stadiums and Israel's Ben-Gurion
International Airport. He warned airlines to stay
away from Thursday morning and cautioned
Israelis living near to Gaza against returning to
their homes.
An Israeli airport spokesman said there were no
disruptions reported in Thursday's flight
schedules.
Five children were killed in separate air strikes,
according to Gaza health officials, and the Israeli
military said it had targeted four gunmen in
northern Gaza.
Hamas said it had fired two rockets at an Israeli
gas installation about 30 km (19 miles) off the
coast of Gaza in the first apparent attack of its
kind. The Israeli military said no missiles had
struck any gas platforms at sea.
The Palestinian Health Ministry says 2,040
people, most of them civilians, have been killed in
Gaza. Israel says it has killed hundreds of
Palestinian militants in fighting that the United
Nations says has displaced about 425,000 people.
Sixty-four Israeli soldiers and three civilians in
Israel have been killed in the most deadly and
destructive war Hamas and Israel have fought
since Israel withdrew unilaterally from Gaza in
2005, before Hamas seized the territory in 2007.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose
Fatah party took part in the Cairo talks, was due
to meet the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin
Hamad al-Thani, and exiled Hamas leader Khaled
Meshaal in Doha on Wednesday, diplomatic
sources said.
Israel instructed its civilians to open bomb
shelters as far as 80 km (50 miles) from Gaza, or
beyond the Tel Aviv area, and the military called
up 2,000 reservists.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in a
statement he was "gravely disappointed by the
return to hostilities" and urged the sides not to
allow matters to escalate.
Egyptian mediators have been struggling to end
the Gaza conflict and seal a deal that would open
the way for reconstruction aid to flow into the
territory of 1.8 million people, where thousands of
homes have been destroyed.
The Palestinians want Egypt and Israel to lift their
blockades of the economically crippled Gaza Strip
that predated the Israeli offensive.
(Additional reporting by Maggie Fick and Stephen
Kalin in Cairo; Writing by Maayan Lubell; Editing
by Jeffrey Heller and Gareth Jones)