Four children playing football killed in Gaza

ISRAELI forces killed four Palestinian boys playing football in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip yesterday, medical workers said, during intensified attacks in response to the death of an Israeli in a rocket strike.

The deaths of the boys, aged 10, 12, 13 and 15, near the town of Jabalya, raised to 26 the number of Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip over the past two days.

Fifteen Palestinians were killed in air strikes or by missiles yesterday, the medical workers said. An Israeli military spokeswoman had no immediate information.

“We are at the height of the battle,” Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in Tokyo, where he met US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice before her visit next week to Israel to try to push along peace talks.

Olmert appeared to suggest that a major Israeli ground operation against militants in the Gaza Strip was not imminent, saying Israel’s fight against them was a “long process” and it had “no magic formula” to halt frequent rocket attacks.

However, Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman later said the violence “may leave us no choice” but to send troops back in, two and a half years after Israel ended its occupation of Gaza.