Reuters, Gaza :
An Israeli air strike in Gaza killed the wife and infant son of Hamas’s military leader, Mohammed Deif, the group said, calling it an attempt to assassinate him after a ceasefire collapsed.
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.
Israeli aircraft have carried out 80 strikes in the Gaza Strip since Tuesday, the military said.
Hamas and medical officials said 19 people died in the latest Israeli raids, including Deif’s wife and seven-month-old son. Deif is widely believed to be masterminding the military campaign from underground bunkers.
A Hamas official said 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 the Islamist movement could still reach Israel’s heartland despite heavy Israeli bombardments in the five-week-old conflict.
Five children were killed in separate air strikes, according to Gaza health officials, and the Israeli military said it targeted two gunmen in northern Gaza.
The Palestinian Health Ministry says 2,036 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in Gaza. Israel says it has killed hundreds of Palestinian militants in fighting that the United Nations says has displaced about 425,000 people.
Sixty-four Israeli soldiers and three civilians in Israel have also been killed in the most deadly and destructive war Hamas and Israel have fought since Israel withdrew unilaterally from Gaza in 2005, before Hamas seized the territory in 2007.
Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah party took part in the Cairo talks, was due to meet the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, and exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Doha on Wednesday, diplomatic sources said.
Israel instructed its civilians to open bomb shelters as far as 80 km (50 miles) from Gaza, or beyond the Tel Aviv area, and the military called up 2,000 reservists.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned the breach of the ceasefire, saying in a statement he was “gravely disappointed by the return to hostilities” and urging the sides not to allow matters to escalate.
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.
