US stocks surge on fiscal cliff hopes, housing data

NEW YORK: US stocks surged Monday on upbeat housing data and hopes that politicians will find a way to avoid the so-called "fiscal cliff" of automatic tax hikes and spending cuts in January.

The jump was underpinned by Apple, the most valuable public company, which took a 7.2 per cent bounce to $565.73, following weeks of losses.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained a hefty 207.65 points (1.65 per cent) at 12,795.96.

The S&P 500-stock index advanced 27.01 points (1.99 per cent) to 1,386.89, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite leaped 62.94 (2.21 per cent) to 2,916.07.

"In the wake of a couple of stronger-than-expected reports on the US housing sector, as well as growing optimism that US lawmakers will find a resolution to the looming fiscal cliff, the domestic equity markets are rebounding nicely from their recent sell-off," Charles Schwab & Co. analysts said.

The strong rally began a holiday-shortened week amid news that existing home sales rose 2.1 per cent in October from September and home builder confidence improved for a seventh straight month in November.

"The housing data revealed today are quite positive, reflecting the sustained recovery in the housing market that began earlier this year," said Nomura economist Roiana Reid.

Dow member Intel rose 0.3 per cent after announcing that chief executive Paul Otellini would retire in May.

Computer networking giant Cisco, which is buying cloud computing specialist Meraki for $1.2 billion, gained 1.7 per cent.

Lowe's jumped 6.2 per cent after the home improvement retailer posted better-than-expected third-quarter results.

Bank of America added 4.1 per cent after an upgrade by Stifel analysts, lifting financials. Citigroup added 3.2 per cent, Goldman Sachs 2.1 per cent and Morgan Stanley 2.1 per cent.

JPMorgan Chase climbed 2.7 per cent. The bank said Monday it had agreed to pay $297 million to the US Securities and Exchange Commission to settle a dispute over the sale of mortgage-backed securities.

Markets will be closed Thursday for the Thanksgiving Day holiday and have shortened sessions on Friday.

Bond prices fell. The 10-year US Treasury yield rose to 1.61 per cent from 1.57 per cent late Friday, while the 30-year increased to 2.76 per cent from 2.72 per cent.

Bond prices and yields move inversely.

- AFP/fa

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Ensure justice to Sikhs: Parkash Singh Badal to Manmohan Singh

CHANDIGARH: Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal on Monday asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to direct the Delhi government to get the process of DSGMC polls completed by December-end this year, the deadline fixed by the Supreme Court.

"I have already taken up the matter of DSGMC polls with the PM and hope he will ensure justice to Sikhs," he said.

Badal asked the PM to direct the Delhi government to complete the election process for the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Managament Committee by December 31, the deadeline set up by the apex court.

The chief minister had already written a letter to the Prime Minister pertaining to DSGMC elections. Badal was addressing reporters here on the sidelines of the inaugural function of Devi Lal Memorial Centre of Learning .

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EU drug regulator OKs Novartis' meningitis B shot

LONDON (AP) — Europe's top drug regulator has recommended approval for the first vaccine against meningitis B, made by Novartis AG.

There are five types of bacterial meningitis. While vaccines exist to protect against the other four, none has previously been licensed for type B meningitis. In Europe, type B is the most common, causing 3,000 to 5,000 cases every year.

Meningitis mainly affects infants and children. It kills about 8 percent of patients and leaves others with lifelong consequences such as brain damage.

In a statement on Friday, Andrin Oswald of Novartis said he is "proud of the major advance" the company has made in developing its vaccine Bexsero. It is aimed at children over two months of age, and Novartis is hoping countries will include the shot among the routine ones for childhood diseases such as measles.

Novartis said the immunization has had side effects such as fever and redness at the injection site.

Recommendations from the European Medicines Agency are usually adopted by the European Commission. Novartis also is seeking to test the vaccine in the U.S.

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Israeli Airstrike Kills Top Islamic Jihad Commander

An Israeli strike on a Gaza City high-rise today has killed one of the top militant leaders of Islamic Jihad, the Palestinian militant group said.

The second strike in two days on the downtown Gaza City building that houses the Hamas TV station, Al Aqsa, has killed Ramez Harb, who is a leading figure in Al Quds Brigades militant wing, according to a text message Islamic Jihad sent to reporters.

Witnesses told the AP that the Israeli airstrike, part of a widening effort to suppress Hamas rocket fire into Israel, struck the building Monday afternoon, and ambulances quickly rushed to the scene. Paramedics told the AP that one person was killed and several wounded.

It is also the second high profile commander taken out in the Israeli offensive, which began six days ago with a missile strike that killed Ahmed Jibari, Hamas' top military commander.

Today mourners buried the 11 victims of an Israeli air strike on Sunday, the single deadliest incident since the escalation between Hamas and Israel began Wednesday. Among the dead were nine members of the Daloo family, killed when an Israeli warplane targeted their home in Gaza City while trying to kill a Hamas rocket maker, whose fate is unknown.

Palestinian deaths climbed to 96 Monday when four more, including two children, were killed in a strike on a sports stadium the Israel Defense Forces said was being used to launch rockets. Gaza health officials said half of those killed were children, women or elderly men.

With the death toll rising, Egypt accelerated efforts to broker a cease-fire, but so far the two sides are far apart. Egypt is being supported by Qatar and Turkey in its peacemaking mission and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is scheduled to arrive at the talks later today.

President Obama called Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today to discuss ways to reduce tensions and bring the fighting to a halt.

Israel carried out 80 air strikes this morning, down from previous morning totals. There were 75 militant rocket launches, the Israeli military said, also a relatively low tally. The Israel Defense Forces said that since Wednesday, around 1,100 strikes had been carried out in Gaza while militants have launched about 1,000 rockets towards Israel.

Three Israeli civilians died from militant rocket fire in one attack Thursday and dozens have been wounded.

Sunday proved to be one the deadliest days of what Israel has called "Operation Pillar of Defense" with at least 23 Palestinians reported killed. Of those, at least 14 were women and children, according to a Gaza health official. The Israel Defense Forces told ABC News it was targeting Hamas rocket maker Yehiya Bia, who lives near the Daloo family in a densely populated Gaza neighborhood and has not been accounted for.

Israel shifted its tactics this weekend from striking rocket arsenals and firing positions to targeting the homes of senior Hamas commanders and the offices of Hamas politicians in Gaza. Doing so brought the violence into Gaza's most densely populated areas.

Israel hit two high-rise buildings Sunday that house the offices of Hamas and international media outlets, injuring at least six journalists.

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Israel says prefers diplomacy but ready to invade Gaza

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel bombed dozens more targets in the Gaza Strip on Monday and said that, while it was prepared to step up its offensive by sending in troops, it preferred a diplomatic solution that would end Palestinian rocket fire.

Egypt said a deal for a truce could be close, though by late evening there was no end to six days of heavy missile exchanges as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed his next steps with his inner circle of senior ministers.

U.S. President Barack Obama called Egypt's President Mohamed Mursi, who has been trying to use his influence with Hamas, his fellow Islamists who run Gaza, to broker a halt. Obama "underscored the necessity of Hamas ending rocket fire", the White House said.

The leader of Hamas, speaking in Cairo, said it was up to Israel to end a new conflict that he said it had started. Israel, which assassinated a Hamas military chief on Wednesday, says its air strikes are to halt Palestinian rocket attacks.

To Mursi and in a subsequent call to Netanyahu, Obama said he regretted the deaths of Israeli and Palestinian civilians.

Israeli attacks on the sixth day of fighting raised the number of Palestinian dead to 101, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said, listing 24 children among them. Subsequent deaths raised the toll in Gaza to 106. Hospital officials in the enclave said more than half of those killed were non-combatants. Three Israeli civilians died on Thursday in a rocket strike.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, touring the region in the hopes of helping to broker a peace deal, arrived in Cairo, where he met Egypt's foreign minister in preparation for talks with Mursi on Tuesday. He also plans to meet Netanyahu in Jerusalem.

With the power balances of the Middle East drastically reshaped by the Arab Spring during a first Obama term that began two days after Israel ended its last major Gaza offensive, the newly re-elected U.S. president faces testing choices to achieve Washington's hopes for peace and stability across the region.

ROCKET FIRE

Militants in the Gaza Strip fired 110 rockets at southern Israel on Monday, causing no casualties, police said. Israel said it had conducted 80 air strikes on the enclave. The figures meant a relative easing in ferocity - over 1,000 rockets have been fired in the six days, and 1,350 air strikes carried out.

For the second straight day, Israeli missiles blasted a tower block in the city of Gaza housing international media. Two people were killed there, one of them an Islamic Jihad militant.

Khaled Meshaal, exile leader of Hamas, said a truce was possible but the Islamist group, in charge of the Gaza Strip since 2007, would not accept Israeli demands and wanted Israel to halt its strikes first and lift its blockade of the enclave.

"Whoever started the war must end it," he told a news conference in Cairo, adding that Netanyahu, who faces an election in January, had asked for a truce, an assertion a senior Israeli official described as untrue.

Meshaal said Netanyahu feared the domestic consequences of a "land war" of the kind Israel launched four years ago: "He can do it, but he knows that it will not be a picnic and that it could be his political death and cost him the elections."

For Israel, Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon has said that "if there is quiet in the south and no rockets and missiles are fired at Israel's citizens, nor terrorist attacks engineered from the Gaza Strip, we will not attack".

Yaalon also said Israel wanted an end to guerrilla activity by militants from Gaza in the neighboring Egyptian Sinai peninsula.

Although 84 percent of Israelis support the current Gaza assault, according to a poll by Israel's Haaretz newspaper, only 30 percent want an invasion.

DIPLOMACY "PREFERRED"

"Israel is prepared and has taken steps, and is ready for a ground incursion which will deal severely with the Hamas military machine," an official close to Netanyahu told Reuters.

"We would prefer to see a diplomatic solution that would guarantee the peace for Israel's population in the south. If that is possible, then a ground operation would no longer be required. If diplomacy fails, we may well have no alternative but to send in ground forces," he added.

Egypt, where Mursi has his roots in Hamas's spiritual mentors the Muslim Brotherhood, is acting as a mediator in the biggest test yet of Cairo's 1979 peace treaty with Israel since the fall of Hosni Mubarak early last year.

"I think we are close, but the nature of this kind of negotiation, (means) it is very difficult to predict," Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil, who visited Gaza on Friday in a show of support for its people, said in an interview in Cairo for the Reuters Middle East Investment Summit.

Egypt has been hosting leaders of both Hamas and Islamic Jihad, a smaller armed faction.

Israeli media said a delegation from Israel had also been to Cairo for truce talks. A spokesman for Netanyahu's government declined comment on the matter.

Egypt's foreign minister, who met U.N. chief Ban on Monday, is expected to visit Gaza on Tuesday with a delegation of Arab ministers.

THOUSANDS MOURN FAMILY

Thousands turned out on Gaza's streets to mourn four children and five women who were among 11 people killed in an Israeli air strike that flattened a three-storey home the previous day.

The bodies were wrapped in Palestinian and Hamas flags. Echoes of explosions mixed with cries of grief and defiant chants of "God is greatest!".

Those deaths drew more international calls for an end to hostilities and could test Western support for an offensive that Israel billed as self-defense after years of cross-border rocket attacks.

Israel said it was investigating the strike that brought the home crashing down on the al-Dalu family, where the dead spanned four generations. Some Israeli newspapers said the house might have been targeted by mistake.

In scenes recalling Israel's 2008-2009 winter invasion of the coastal enclave, tanks, artillery and infantry have massed in field encampments along the sandy, fenced-off border.

Israel has also authorized the call-up of 75,000 military reservists, so far mobilizing around half that number.

The Gaza fighting adds to worries of world powers watching an already combustible region, where several Arab autocrats have been toppled in popular revolts in the past two years and a civil war in Syria threatens to spread beyond its borders.

In the absence of any prospect of permanent peace between Israel and Islamist factions such as Hamas, mediated deals for each to hold fire unilaterally have been the only formula for stemming bloodshed in the past.

Hamas and other groups in Gaza are sworn enemies of the Jewish state, which they refuse to recognize and seek to eradicate, claiming all Israeli territory as rightfully theirs.

Hamas won legislative elections in the Palestinian Territories in 2006. A year later, after the collapse of a unity government under President Mahmoud Abbas, it seized Gaza in a brief civil war with Abbas's forces.

(Writing by Jeffrey Heller, Dan Williams and Peter Graff; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)

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Gaza's death toll rises in Israeli air raids

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: New Israeli air raids killed three people in Gaza City on Sunday, taking the death toll to 26 on the bloodiest day of Israel's bombing campaign, Hamas said.

Two of the deaths came in an air strike that targeted a motorbike in the Gaza City neighbourhood of Tal al-Hawa.

"Two Palestinians were killed in an air strike on the Tal al-Hawa neighbourhood," Hamas health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said, without adding details.

A third Palestinian, a six-year-old child, was killed in another strike in northern Gaza on Sunday evening.

"Hussein Jalal Nasser, six years old, was martyred in an air strike that targeted his house," emergency services spokesman Adham Abu Selmiya told AFP.

The deaths brought to 26 the number of Palestinians killed on Sunday, in the bloodiest day so far of Israel's campaign against the Gaza Strip.

The overall death toll in some 100 hours of relentless Israeli air strikes stood at 72, with at least 660 injured, health officials said.,

At least 10 children, five of them babies and toddlers, and five women were among those killed on Sunday, in attacks that came even as diplomatic efforts intensified to broker an end to the bloodshed which began on Wednesday.

The violence has also cost the lives of three Israelis and injured more than 50, according to medical sources.

The deadliest strike by far was in northern Gaza City where a missile levelled a three-storey building, killing nine members of the Al-Dallu family, five of them children, and two other people, medics said.

Qudra named the dead as policeman Mohammed al-Dallu, 35, Suheila al-Dallu, 50, Samah al-Dallu, 22, and five children: Jamal and Sara, whose ages were not immediately available, five-year-old Yussef, two-year-old Ranin, and 11-month-old Ibrahim.

The body of another woman from the same family was also pulled from the rubble but her identity was not immediately clear.

The other two victims, who lived next door, were named as Amina Mattar al-Muzzana, 83, and Abdullah Mohammed al-Muzzana, 22, Qudra said.

The Israeli army had no immediate comment on the strike, only saying the air force had hit "a few targets in northern Gaza City".

Shortly afterwards, six more Palestinians were killed in four separate strikes -- two in Gaza City, one on the Jabaliya refugee camp and one on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.

In Gaza City, Sami al-Ghafir was killed in a raid on the eastern Shejaiya neighbourhood, and Mohammed al-Awf was killed in the north of the city.

The strike on Jabaliya killed Suheil Hamada and his son Moamin as they were driving a water delivery truck through the camp.

And an early-evening strike on Nuseirat killed two men, Aatiya Mubarak and Hossam Abu Shawish, the emergency services said.

Earlier strikes across the strip killed six more Palestinians, four of them children.

At around 2:00am (0000 GMT) strikes on the northern town of Beit Hanun killed two toddlers, three-year-old Tamer Abu Saeyfan and his one-year-old sister Jumana.

Several hours later, 18-month-old Iyyad Abu Khusa was killed in a strike east of Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza. His two brothers, aged four and five, were critically wounded in the raid, Qudra said.

Medics later reported finding under the rubble of a house in eastern Gaza City the body of a woman who had been killed in a strike earlier in the morning. They named her as Nawal Abdelaal, 52.

And in the late morning an air strike on a small house in the beachfront Shati refugee camp in Gaza City killed 13-year-old Tasneem al-Nahal and Ahmad al-Nahal, 25, both from the same family.

- AFP/fa

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EU drug regulator OKs Novartis' meningitis B shot

LONDON (AP) — Europe's top drug regulator has recommended approval for the first vaccine against meningitis B, made by Novartis AG.

There are five types of bacterial meningitis. While vaccines exist to protect against the other four, none has previously been licensed for type B meningitis. In Europe, type B is the most common, causing 3,000 to 5,000 cases every year.

Meningitis mainly affects infants and children. It kills about 8 percent of patients and leaves others with lifelong consequences such as brain damage.

In a statement on Friday, Andrin Oswald of Novartis said he is "proud of the major advance" the company has made in developing its vaccine Bexsero. It is aimed at children over two months of age, and Novartis is hoping countries will include the shot among the routine ones for childhood diseases such as measles.

Novartis said the immunization has had side effects such as fever and redness at the injection site.

Recommendations from the European Medicines Agency are usually adopted by the European Commission. Novartis also is seeking to test the vaccine in the U.S.

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Officials: Israeli Strike Kills 11 Civilians in Gaza

An Israeli missile flattened a two-story house in a residential neighborhood of Gaza City on Sunday, killing at least 11 civilians, mostly women and children, Palestinian medical officials said, as Israel expanded a military offensive to target homes of wanted militants.

The attack, which Israel said targeted a militant, was the single deadliest incident of the five-day-old Israeli operation and hiked a toll Sunday that was already the highest number of civilians killed in one day, according to Gaza medics. The bloodshed is likely to raise international pressure for a cease-fire, with Egypt taking the leading role in mediating between Israel and Hamas.

President Barack Obama said he had been in touch with the leaders of Israel, Egypt, and Turkey in an effort to halt the fighting. "We're going to have to see what kind of progress we can make in the next 24, 36, 48 hours," he said.

Obama cautioned against a potential Israeli ground invasion into Gaza, warning it could only deepen its death toll. At the same time, he blamed Palestinian militants for starting the round of fighting by raining rockets onto Israel, and he defended Israel's right to defend itself.

"Israel has every right to expect that it does not have missiles fired into its territory," Obama said in Thailand at the start of a three-nation tour in Asia.

Is Ceasefire Possible for Israel and Hamas? Watch Video

An Israeli envoy arrived in Cairo on Sunday and held talks with Egyptian officials on a ceasefire, according to Egyptian security officials and Nabil Shaath, a top aide of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas who was in the Egyptian capital.

But Israel and Gaza's militant Hamas rulers remain far apart on any terms for a halt in the bloodshed, which has killed 70 Palestinians — including 36 civilians, according to Gaza health officials — and three Israeli civilians.

Hamas is linking a truce deal to a complete lifting of the border blockade on Gaza imposed since Islamists seized the territory by force. Hamas also seeks Israeli guarantees to halt targeted killings of its leaders and military commanders. Israeli officials reject such demands. They say they are not interested in a "timeout," and want firm guarantees that militant rocket fire into Israel will finally end. Past ceasefires have been short lived.

As the offensive moved forward, Israel found itself at a crossroads — on the cusp of launching a ground offensive into Gaza to strike an even tougher blow against Hamas, or pursuing Egyptian-led truce efforts.

"The Israeli military is prepared to significantly expand the operation," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting.

At the same time, Gaza militants continued their barrage of rocket fire at Israel, firing more than 100, including two at Tel Aviv. More than 10 Israelis were injured by shrapnel, two moderately, according to police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld. Israel's "Iron Dome" rocket-defense system shot down at least 30 rockets, including the ones aimed at Tel Aviv.

Israel's announcement Sunday that it was widening its campaign to target homes of militants appeared to mark a new and risky phase of the operation, given the likelihood of civilian casualties in the densely populated territory of 1.5 million Palestinians. Israel launched the offensive Wednesday in a bid to end months of intensifying rocket fire from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

The day's deadliest strike hit the home of the Daloo family in Gaza City, reducing the structure to rubble.

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Israeli air strike kills 11 civilians in Gaza: Hamas

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli missile killed at least 11 Palestinian civilians including four children in Gaza on Sunday, medical officials said, apparently an attack on a top militant that brought a three-storey home crashing down.

International pressure for a ceasefire seemed certain to mount in response to the deadliest single incident in five days of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel and Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip.

Egypt has taken the lead in trying to broker a ceasefire and Israeli media said a delegation from Israel had been to Cairo for talks on ending the fighting, although a government spokesman declined to comment on the matter.

Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi met Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal and Islamic Jihad's head Ramadan Shallah as part of the mediation efforts, but a presidency statement did not say if they were conclusive.

Izzat Risheq, a close aide to Meshaal, wrote in a Facebook message that Hamas would agree to a ceasefire only after Israel "stops its aggression, ends its policy of targeted assassinations and lifts the blockade of Gaza".

Listing Israel's terms for ceasing fire, Moshe Yaalon, a deputy to the prime minister, wrote on Twitter: "If there is quiet in the south and no rockets and missiles are fired at Israel's citizens, nor terrorist attacks engineered from the Gaza Strip, we will not attack."

Gaza health officials said 72 Palestinians , 21 of them children and several women have been killed in Gaza since Israel's offensive began. Hundreds have been wounded.

Israel gave off signs of a possible ground invasion of the Hamas-run enclave as the next stage in its offensive, billed as a bid to stop Palestinian rocket fire into the Jewish state. It also spelt out its conditions for a truce.

U.S. President Barack Obama said that while Israel had a right to defend itself against the salvoes, it would be "preferable" to avoid a military thrust into the Gaza Strip, a narrow, densely populated coastal territory. Such an assault would risk high casualties and an international outcry.

A spokesman for the Hamas-run Interior Ministry said 11 people, all of them civilians, were killed when an Israeli missile flattened the home of the Dalu family. Medics said four women and four children were among the dead.

Israel's chief military spokesman said Yihia Abayah, a senior commander of rocket operations in the Gaza Strip, had been the target.

The spokesman, Yoav Mordechai, told Israel's Channel 2 television he did not know whether Abayah was killed, "but the outcome was that there were civilian casualties". He made no direct mention of the destroyed dwelling.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier that he had assured world leaders that Israel was doing its utmost to avoid causing civilian casualties in the military showdown with Hamas.

"The massacre of the Dalu family will not pass without punishment," Hamas's armed wing said in a statement.

VIOLENCE

In other air raids on Sunday, two Gaza City media buildings were hit, witnesses said. Eight journalists were wounded and facilities belonging to Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV as well as Britain's Sky News were damaged.

An employee of the Beirut-based al Quds television station lost his leg in the attack, local medics said.

The Israeli military said the strike targeted a rooftop "transmission antenna used by Hamas to carry out terror activity", and that journalists in the building had effectively been used as human shields by Gaza's rulers.

For their part, Gaza militants launched dozens of rockets into Israel and targeted its commercial capital, Tel Aviv, for a fourth day, once in the morning and another after dark.

Israel's "Iron Dome" missile shield shot down all three rockets, but falling debris from the daytime interception hit a car, which caught fire. Its driver was not hurt.

In scenes recalling Israel's 2008-2009 winter invasion of Gaza, tanks, artillery and infantry massed in field encampments along the sandy, fenced-off border. Military convoys moved on roads in the area newly closed to civilian traffic.

Netanyahu said Israel was ready to widen its offensive.

"We are exacting a heavy price from Hamas and the terrorist organizations and the Israel Defence Forces are prepared for a significant expansion of the operation," he said at a cabinet meeting, giving no further details.

The Israeli military said 544 rockets fired from Gaza have hit Israel since Wednesday, killing three civilians and wounding dozens. Some 302 were intercepted and 99 failed to reach Israel and landed inside the Gaza Strip, it added.

Israel's declared goal is to deplete Gaza arsenals and force the Islamist Hamas to stop rocket fire that has bedeviled Israeli border towns for years and is now displaying greater range, putting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in the crosshairs.

Israel withdrew settlers from Gaza in 2005 and two years later Hamas took control of the impoverished enclave, which the Israelis have kept under blockade.

OBAMA CAUTIONS AGAINST GROUND CAMPAIGN

At a news conference during a visit to the Thai capital Bangkok, Obama said Israel has "every right to expect that it does not have missiles fired into its territory".

He added: "If this can be accomplished without a ramping up of military activity in Gaza that is preferable. That's not just preferable for the people of Gaza, it's also preferable for Israelis because if Israeli troops are in Gaza they're much more at risk of incurring fatalities or being wounded," he said.

Obama said he had been in regular contact with Egyptian and Turkish leaders - to secure their mediation in bringing about a halt to rocket barrages by Hamas and other Islamist militants.

"We're going to have to see what kind of progress we can make in the next 24, 36, 48 hours," he added.

Diplomatic efforts continued on Sunday when French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius met Israeli officials and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.

"It is absolutely necessary that we move urgently towards a ceasefire, and that's where France can be useful," Fabius told French television, adding that war must be avoided.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will be in Egypt on Monday for talks with Mursi, the foreign ministry in Cairo said. U.N. diplomats earlier said Ban was expected in Israel and Egypt this week to push for an end to the fighting.

Israel's operation has so far drawn Western support for what U.S. and European leaders have called its right to self-defence, but there was also a growing number of appeals from them to seek an end to the hostilities.

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Israel Gaza raids kill 14, Arabs urge policy review

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Israeli air strikes on Gaza killed 14 Palestinians on Saturday and destroyed the Hamas government headquarters, prompting Arab leaders to call for a review of their entire policy on the Middle East peace process.

Medics said 44 Gazans have been killed and more than 390 wounded since Israel launched its aerial campaign on Wednesday afternoon, with at least eight militants among the 14 people killed on Saturday.

As the toll rose, sirens sounded in Tel Aviv for a third day, sending people scuttling for cover a day after a rocket hit the sea near the city centre, AFP correspondents said.

Israeli officials said one rocket was intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile system while a second hit somewhere in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. The attack was claimed by Hamas' armed wing.

Nine people in Israel were injured by militant rocket fire.

Warplanes carried out 180 air strikes on Gaza overnight, Israeli television reported, with attacks levelling the headquarters of the Hamas government.

In Egypt, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Israel would be held to account for the children killed.

"Everyone must know that sooner or later there will be a holding to account for the massacre of these innocent children killed inhumanely in Gaza," he said in a speech in Cairo.

So far, six children have been killed, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights said.

Both Turkey and Egypt have publicly shrugged off US bids to get them to exert pressure on the Islamist Hamas into ending rocket fire, instead blaming the Jewish state for the violence.

Arab foreign ministers at an emergency meeting in Cairo roundly denounced Israel's Gaza campaign and demanded a review of what they called their futile diplomacy towards the Jewish state.

Member states should "reconsider all past Arab initiatives on the peace process and review their stance on the process as a whole," said Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi.

In 2002, Arab states offered Israel diplomatic recognition in return for its withdrawal from all occupied territory and an equitable settlement of the Palestinian refugee question, a cornerstone of Arab diplomacy ever since.

Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal was also in Cairo on Saturday to meet Egypt's intelligence chief, Erdogan and Qatari emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, a senior Hamas official said.

US Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said both President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agree that de-escalation is preferable, provided that Hamas ceases firing on Israel.

"We believe that the precipitating factor for the conflict was the rocket fire coming out of Gaza," Rhodes told reporters aboard Air Force One.

"We believe that Israel has a right to defend itself, and they'll make their own decisions about the tactics that they use in that regard."

Since the start of Operation Pillar of Defence, the Israeli army says militants have fired more than 600 rockets over the border, of which 430 hit and 245 were intercepted by Iron Dome missiles.

Over the same period, three Israelis have been killed and 18 injured, including 10 soldiers, with the army saying the air force had hit more than 950 targets in Gaza.

The Israeli military in a statement on Saturday said the air force had targeted "a senior Hamas operative in charge of the terror organisation's smuggling operations.. and the senior member of Hamas' air defence unit, Mohammed Kaleb."

Four Israeli soldiers and five civilians were hurt in separate rocket attacks on Saturday, police and the army said. Hamas claimed the attack on the soldiers, while Islamic Jihad said it fired rockets which injured civilians in Ashdod.

Multiple Israeli air strikes on Gaza on Saturday killed 14 people, including at least eight militants.

Late on Friday, the military sealed off all main roads around Gaza in the latest sign it was poised to launch its first ground offensive on the territory since its 22-day campaign over New Year 2009.

Israeli ministers approved the call-up of as many as 75,000 reservists on Friday after Hamas militants said they fired a rocket at Jerusalem, and another hit the sea off Tel Aviv, causing panic but no casualties.

Meanwhile, online activist group Anonymous said it had downed the websites of dozens of Israeli state agencies and the Bank of Jerusalem in protest over the deadly air assault on Gaza.

- AFP/de

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