GAZA CITY, Feb 29: Tens of thousands of Gazans on Friday protested against Israeli raids that have killed more than 30 Palestinians, as Israel mulled a major ground operation to stop rocket fire from the Hamas-run territory.

The demonstrators poured into the streets throughout the impoverished and isolated territory in response to Hamas calls to denounce Israel’s air strikes, whose victims include several children.

“They’ve killed my right to childhood,” read a sign held by a child, clad in a red-stained white funeral shroud, who attended a large rally in the northern town of Jabaliya.

Among the protesters in Gaza City was Khalil al-Hayyah, a Hamas leader who lost a 25-year-old son in an Israeli air strike on Thursday.

“We will never recognise Israel, even if it assassinates all our leaders and kills our children,” he shouted to the crowd.

A senior Hamas official earlier told worshippers at a Gaza City mosque that the coastal strip which the Islamists have ruled for more than eight months was faced with war.

“Gaza today faces a real war, a crazy war led by the enemy against our people,” said Ismail Haniya, the premier in a Hamas-led government which Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas fired after the Islamists seized control of Gaza.

Haniya lashed out at the US administration, which he claimed backs the Israeli attacks by portraying them as “legitimate self-defence.” He also accused the Arab world of “encouraging the Israeli aggression” through its silence.

However, the 57-member Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) later Friday condemned the Israeli raids and urged the United Nations to rein in Israel.

In Israel, Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai warned that the Jewish state “will not shy away from any action” to halt the near-daily rocket fire from Gaza.

“By intensifying the rocket fire and extending their reach they are bringing onto themselves a worse catastrophe as we will use all means to defend ourselves,” Vilnai told army radio.

Vilnai’s spokesman took strong exception to media reports that quoted the minister calling for a “Holocaust” in Gaza. “The minister used the Hebrew term ‘shoah’ which means ‘catastrophe’ and in this context does not refer to the ‘the Shoah’ -- the Holocaust,” said Eytan Guinsburg.

Defence Minister Ehud Barak said earlier Israel was considering the possibility of launching a widescale ground operation in Gaza.

A Palestinian civilian died in Gaza on Friday of injuries received in an Israeli strike the previous day, bringing to 31 the number of people killed in the raids since early Wednesday, including six children, medics said.

On Friday 11 people, six of them children, were wounded in Israeli strikes in Gaza, medics said. Among the casualties was a two-year-old girl severely wounded in an attack in Beit Hanun, a town located about one kilometre (0.6 miles) from the Israeli border.

Israel says its strikes target rocket-launching sites. Gaza militants have fired more 125 rockets at Israel since Wednesday, according to the Israeli army.

—AFP