Israel steps up Gaza air strikes

GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli forces killed four Palestinianboys playing football in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip on Thursday,medical workers said, during intensified attacks in response tothe death of an Israeli in a rocket strike.

The deaths of the boys, aged 10, 12, 13 and 15, near thetown of Jabalya, raised to 26 the number of Palestinians killedin the Gaza Strip over the past two days. An Israeli militaryspokeswoman had no immediate information about the incident.

"We are at the height of the battle," Israeli PrimeMinister Ehud Olmert said in Tokyo, where he met U.S. Secretaryof State Condoleezza Rice before her visit next week to Israeland the occupied West Bank to try to push along peace talks.

Olmert appeared to suggest a major Israeli ground operationagainst militants in the Gaza Strip was not imminent, sayingIsrael's fight against them was a "long process" and it had "nomagic formula" to halt frequent rocket attacks.

However, Israel's Foreign Ministry spokesman later said theviolence "may leave us no choice" but to send troops back in,two and a half years after Israel ended its occupation of Gaza.

Fifteen Palestinians -- the four boys, three adultcivilians and eight militants -- were killed in air strikes orby missiles fired from the ground on Thursday, the medicalworkers said.

The father of two of the youths wept in a Gaza hospital,unable to speak. Medical workers said the boys were playingsoccer when an Israeli missile struck.

Another missile struck a police post about 150 metres(yards) from the home of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, killingone civilian, hospital officials said. The attack did notappear to have targeted Haniyeh, whose house was not damaged.

A six-month-old Palestinian baby was killed in an Israeliair strike on Wednesday. Hours earlier, five senior Hamas menhad died in an attack from the air and a rocket fired by theIslamist group at the Israeli border town of Sderot killed anIsraeli man at a college, the first such death since May.

The Israeli military said 21 rockets and 12 mortar bombswere fired from the Gaza Strip on Thursday. Three people werewounded in Israel and the government's security minister,visiting Sderot, had to scramble for cover as a siren sounded.

Two rockets flew deeper into southern Israel, hitting ahouse and cemetery in Ashkelon, a city of 120,000 people. Noone was hurt. Hamas's new use against Ashkelon ofSoviet-designed Grad missiles, more powerful and accurate thanimprovised Gazan Qassams, has raised the stakes in theconfrontation.

PEACE PROCESS

Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Palestinian PresidentMahmoud Abbas, who is negotiating with Israel, said in astatement its military actions "meant only one thing: theIsraeli government ... aims to destroy the peace process".

Olmert said at the end of a four-day visit to Japan "thecontinuous shooting of Qassam rockets against uninvolved,innocent civilians is a major threat to the stability" ofIsrael's political contacts with Abbas's Palestinian Authority.

He said, however, that he planned to hold another of hisregular meetings with Abbas within the next two weeks.

Washington hopes the talks can result in a statehood dealthis year but Palestinians have complained about their slowpace and Olmert has said the goal of the negotiations was anunderstanding of "basic principles" rather than a full accord.

At a Gaza funeral attended by hundreds, the father ofsix-month-old Mohammed al-Burai cradled the baby's body in hisarms. It was wrapped in the green flag of Hamas. In Sderot,Israelis mourned 47-year-old Ronnie Yehiye, a father of four.

In Tokyo, Rice was asked whether she urged Olmert not touse disproportionate force in responding to the rockets.

"I think that's not a good way to address this issue. Theissue is that the attacks -- rocket attacks -- need to stop,"she told reporters.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki, speaking inEast Jerusalem, said: "These stupid missiles being launched --firecrackers, but at the end they have killed Israeli civilians-- we condemn this, clearly, openly, straightforwardly.

"But at the same time, we condemn all the Israeliincursions into Gaza, killing Palestinian civilians, destroyingtheir houses, preventing them from having a normal life," hesaid.

(Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed and Tova Cohen inTokyo, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, Atef Saad in Nablus and DanWilliams, Ori Lewis and Alastair Macdonald in Jerusalem;writing by Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem, editing by MaryGabriel)