Israel pledges to press on with Gaza offensive
Israel vowed on Sunday to press on with a Gaza offensive and curb rocket strikes, threatening even stronger action despite U.N. condemnation of assaults that have killed more than 100 Palestinians, many of them civilians.
Hamas claims Gaza "victory" as troops pull back"Israel has no intention of stopping the fight against the terrorist organisations even for a minute," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told his cabinet, facing the new challenge of long-range rockets hitting the major southern Israeli city of Ashkelon.
Earlier, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned Israel for using "excessive" force in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip and demanded a halt to air and ground attacks that killed 61 people on Saturday, the bloodiest day for Palestinians since the 1980s.
In the latest fighting, two Palestinian militants were killed in the northern Gaza Strip, medical officials said. The bodies of two girls were found on Sunday in the rubble of a house in Gaza City hit by Israeli forces a day earlier.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas designated Sunday a day of mourning. But he refrained from declaring dead a revived U.S.-backed peace process with Israel opposed by Hamas Islamists who seized the Gaza Strip from his Fatah faction in June.
Olmert said striking at Hamas only advanced the cause of peace, and "the Palestinian leadership -- the one with which we wish to make peace -- understands this".
But Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said: "If Israeli aggression continues, it will bury the peace process."
After five days of fighting in which medical officials said more than 100 Palestinians have been killed, many of them civilians, Ban also called at an emergency U.N. Security Council session for a halt to rocket fire by Gaza's Islamists militants.
In a statement, the Security Council said it was deeply concerned about the loss of civilian life in southern Israel and the Gaza Strip and urged a cessation of violence.
One Israeli has been killed by a rocket launched from Gaza since the current surge in bloodshed began. Hamas has said such salvoes would stop if Israel abandoned operations in the Gaza Strip and raids against militants in the occupied West Bank.
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