A year-old Palestinian girl and a senior Hamas bombmaker were killed in the Gaza Strip on Friday as Israel pressed home air strikes after a senior official warned Gazans they risked a "shoah" if rocket fire did not stop.
With the Palestinian death toll at 35 in three days, aides insisted the deputy defence minister used the Hebrew word not in its common meaning of holocaust but only as a term for disaster. But the strength of his language reflected mounting anger after an Israeli was killed by a rocket on Wednesday and the government debated whether to mount a major ground offensive.
Hamas, which organised rallies in Gaza, held the comment up as proof their enemies in the Jewish state were the "new Nazis".
Friday saw fewer air strikes. One, which the army said had targeted a rocket team, killed Eyad al-Ashram. Hamas said he was one of the Islamist group's senior munitions experts, involved in what it said was a total of 208 rockets fired in February. |