Israel steps up Gaza air strikes after Hamas rockets

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli forces killed four Palestinian boys playing football in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip 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. An Israeli military spokeswoman had no immediate information about the incident.

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

But Olmert appeared to suggest a major Israeli ground operation against militants in the Gaza Strip was not imminent, saying Israel's fight against them was a "long process" and it had "no magic formula" to halt frequent rocket attacks.

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.

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.