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Hamas accuses Israel of trying to kill its military chief

GAZA/JERUSALEM — An Israeli air strike in Gaza yesterday killed the wife and infant son of Hamas’ military leader Mohammed Deif, the group said, calling it an attempt to assassinate him after a ceasefire had collapsed.

GAZA/JERUSALEM — An Israeli air strike in Gaza yesterday killed the wife and infant son of Hamas’ military leader Mohammed Deif, the group said, calling it an attempt to assassinate him after a ceasefire had collapsed.

Palestinians launched more than 130 rockets, mainly at southern Israel, with some intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile system, the Israeli military said. No casualties were reported on the Israeli side.

Egypt, which has been trying to broker a long-term ceasefire in indirect Israeli-Palestinian talks, said it would continue contacts with both sides, whose delegates left Cairo after hostilities resumed on Tuesday.

But there appeared to be no end in sight to violence that shattered a 10-day period of calm, the longest break from fighting since Israel launched its Gaza offensive on July 8 with the declared aim of ending rocket fire into its territory. Israeli aircraft have carried out 80 strikes in the Gaza Strip since Tuesday, targeting “terror sites”, the military said.

Hamas and medical officials said 19 people died in the latest Israeli raids, including Mr Deif’s wife and seven-month-old son. Mr Deif is widely believed to be masterminding the Islamist group’s military campaign from underground bunkers. A Hamas official said Mr Deif had not used the targeted house, where the bodies of three members of the family that lived there were also pulled out of the rubble.

Accusing Israel of opening a “gateway to hell”, Hamas fired rockets at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem late on Tuesday, demonstrating that the Islamist movement could still reach Israel’s heartland despite heavy Israeli bombardments in the five-week-old conflict. There was no official confirmation from Israel that it had tried to kill Mr Deif, who has been targeted in air strikes at least four times since the mid-1990s. Israel holds him responsible for the deaths of dozens of its citizens in suicide bombings.

Israeli police minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch, a member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet, which was due to convene later yesterday, told reporters: “We will continue to hit the heads of Hamas.”

Accusing the militant group of breaking the ceasefire with rocket fire eight hours before it was to have expired, Israel recalled its negotiators from the truce talks in Cairo.

Palestinian negotiators walked out of the talks later, blaming Israel for their failure. Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah party took part in the Cairo talks, was due to meet the emir of Qatar and exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Doha yesterday, diplomatic sources said.

Israel instructed its civilians to open bomb shelters as far as 80km from Gaza, or beyond the Tel Aviv area, and the military called up 2,000 reservists. Egyptian mediators have been struggling to end the Gaza conflict and seal a deal that would open the way for reconstruction aid to flow into the territory of 1.8 million people, where thousands of homes have been destroyed.

The Palestinians want Egypt and Israel to lift their blockades of the economically-crippled Gaza Strip that predated the Israeli offensive.

Israel, like Egypt, views Hamas as a security threat and wants guarantees that any removal of border restrictions will not result in militant groups obtaining weapons.

Hamas has said that laying down its weapons is not an option, saying it will pursue its armed struggle until Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands ends. Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem in 1967. The Palestinians want Gaza and the West Bank for an independent state with its capital in East Jerusalem. REUTERS

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