GAZA CITY, Jan 10: Israel on Saturday vowed to escalate its war in Gaza after carrying out more deadly air strikes, as troops battled Palestinian fighters into a third week despite growing calls for a ceasefire.

As the death rose well above 800, Israeli planes sent a cloud of white leaflets fluttering across the Gaza City skyline, warning residents it would soon step up its war on Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups.

Israeli ground troops clashed with Palestinian fighters while the Israeli air force said it carried out 60 air strikes targeting ‘weapons depots and smuggling tunnels’.

The Israeli military claimed it had killed Amir Mansi, a senior Hamas rocket launcher responsible for many of the long-range rockets fired in recent days. Hamas refused to say where he ranked in the movement’s armed wing.

In a separate incident, eight members of a Palestinian family, including a 12-year-old, were killed during the shelling of the northern town of Jabaliya.

“We were at home when the bombing started,” one of the attack’s survivors Umm Mohammed told AFP inside a nearby hospital.

“We fled towards another house and the tanks started firing. Several of us were hit.”

Zionist forces killed at least 28 people on Saturday, including 17 in heavy fighting in the north and around the Gaza City, according to Dr Muawiya Hassanein, head of Gaza emergency services.

Since the Israeli invasion began on December 27, at least 828 Palestinians have been killed, including 235 children, 93 women and 12 paramedics, he said.

Another 3,350 Palestinians have been wounded, overwhelming Gaza’s beleaguered medical facilities.

Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups fired at least 13 rockets into Israel, wounding four people, according to the Israeli army.

Egypt has been spearheading US-backed efforts to end the fighting that has sparked spiralling protests across the Muslim world, with President Hosni Mubarak meeting his Palestinian counterpart Mahmud Abbas on Saturday.

A Hamas delegation, including for the first time senior officials from Gaza as well as members of the Damascus-based leadership in exile, was also due to hold talks with Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman.

Abbas pressed Hamas to accept the Egyptian plan “without hesitation”, warning that “whoever does not accept (the plan) will be responsible for the continuing aggression and for bloodshed.” Mubarak’s plan calls for an immediate truce for a specified period, opening Gaza’s border crossings, preventing arms smuggling and a call for Palestinians to resume reconciliation talks.

Israeli officials said Egypt has proposed that US-backed forces loyal to Abbas --- which were violently driven out of Gaza when Hamas seized power in 2007 --- patrol the Gaza-Egypt border to help prevent arms smuggling.

But Hamas’s Syria-based politburo said in a joint statement with other armed factions that it would reject “any security arrangements that undermine the resistance” against Israel, including international forces or observers.

Hamas has also rejected a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate truce in a territory already reeling from an 18-month Israeli blockade enacted when the democratically elected Hamas movement seized power.

“UN Security Council Resolution 1860 does not meet the demands and interests of the Palestinian people, and harms the resistance,” said the joint statement issued in Damascus.

Israel has also ignored the UN resolution and on Friday vowed to press ahead with its invasion of the Gaza Strip.

The humanitarian impact of the Israeli invasion is becoming more acute with the United Nations warning that families are going hungry as food supplies dry up.

Ten Israeli soldiers and three civilians have been killed in combat or in rocket attacks since the invasion began, as Palestinian freedom fighters have fired hundreds of rockets, some of them penetrating deeper than ever inside Israel.

In occupied Jerusalem, the United Nations refugee agency slammed an Israeli ambassador’s accusations that its Gaza employees were Hamas loyalists. “We are getting mixed message from the Israeli authorities,” UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness told AFP.

“Yesterday (they) expressed deep regret about the death of our workers and urged us to resume our humanitarian work as soon as possible.

“And yet today an Israeli ambassador is accusing those very same workers of being terrorists. It seems that the Israeli authorities are tying themselves in knots.” Israel’s ambassador to Austria, Dan Ashbel, said in an interview to be published on Monday.---AFP