GAZA CITY – Gaza's Hamas rulers on Thursday said they would not consider a truce with Israel for now, as Israeli planes pounded Gaza and activists fired hundreds of rockets into the Jewish state. “We will not be exposed to further tricks by the occupation. We consider talk of a truce at this time an attempt to provide more cover for the continuation of the escalation on Gaza," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said at a press conference. “Talk of a truce is another attempt by the occupation at deception," he said, adding that "the enemy started an open war on our people and our resistance in Gaza". His remarks appeared to rule out any hopes of a quick end to a surge of violence that began with an Israeli targeted killing of top Hamas field commander Ahmed Jaabari on Wednesday. Since that strike, Israel has carried out at least 150 raids across the Gaza Strip, killing 15 Palestinians, at least seven of them Hamas members. In the same period, Gaza activists have fired more than 200 rockets at Israel, killing three people and injuring 16, police and medics said. The rocket attack drew the first blood from Israel in a military showdown lurching closer to all-out war and an invasion of the improvised enclave. On the second day of an assault Israel said might last many days and culminate in a ground attack, its warplanes bombed targets in and around Gaza City, where tall buildings trembled. Plumes of smoke and dust furled into a sky laced with the vapour trails of outgoing rockets. The sudden conflict, launched by Israel with the killing of Hamas' military chief, pours oil on the fire of a Middle East already ablaze with two years of revolution and an out-of-control civil war in Syria. Palestinian allies denounced the Israeli offensive. The Palestinian Islamist group said it had fired a one-tonne, Iranian-made Fajr 5 rocket at Tel Aviv in what would be a major escalation, but there was no reported impact in the Israeli metropolis 50 km (30 miles) north of the enclave. The offensive began on Wednesday when an Israeli air strike assassinated Hamas military mastermind Ahmed Al-Jaabari, and Israel shelled the enclave from land, air and sea. The 15 killed in Gaza included Jaabari and six Hamas fighters plus eight civilians, among them a pregnant woman with twins, an 11-month old boy and three infants, according to the enclave's Health Ministry. Medics reported at least 130 wounded. At Jaabari's funeral on Thursday, supporters fired guns in the air celebrating news of the Israeli deaths, to chants for Jaabari of "You have won." His body was borne through the streets wrapped in a bloodied white sheet. But senior Hamas figures were not in evidence, wary of Israel's warning that they are now in its crosshairs. The Israeli army said 156 targets were hit in Gaza, 126 of them rocket launchers. It said 200 rockets had struck Israel since the start of the operation, 135 of them since midnight. Israel's Iron Dome interceptor system has so far shot down 81 rockets headed towards residential areas, the military said. One of those that got through caught its victims before they could reach the blast shelters that are everywhere in the Negev region, prey to sporadic Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza for the past five years. Israeli police said the three died when a rocket hit a four-storey building in the town of Kiryat Malachi, some 15 miles north of Gaza. They were the first Israeli fatalities of the latest conflict to hit the coastal region. Expecting days or more of fighting and almost inevitable civilian casualties, Israeli warplanes dropped leaflets in Gaza telling residents to stay away from Hamas and other activists.
