Israel formed an emergency unity government yesterday as it pounded Gaza to root out Hamas and deployed forces north of the densely populated Palestinian enclave, where the militants said they were still fighting after their cross-border assault.

Israeli border police shot dead two Palestinians in annexed east Jerusalem after they threw fireworks and rocks at fellow officers, the force said yesterday.

Israel is not conducting itself “like a state” in the Gaza Strip, Turkey’s president said yesterday, as Israel pounded the territory after a Hamas onslaught.

Gaza is a coastal strip of land that lay on ancient trading and maritime routes along the Mediterranean shore. Held by the Ottoman Empire until 1917, it passed from British to Egyptian to Israeli military rule over the last century and is now a fenced-in enclave inhabited by over 2 million Palestinians

Thousands have died and the toll was continuing to climb dramatically five days after Palestinian militants launched a surprise attack on Israel, which has responded with massive shelling of Gaza

Israel said it recaptured Gaza border areas from Hamas fighters as the war’s death toll passed 3,000 yesterday, the fourth day of fierce fighting since the Islamist group launched a surprise attack.

Israel’s total siege of the Gaza Strip, depriving civilians of goods essential for survival, is banned under international law, the United Nations human rights chief said yesterday.

Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler told Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas he was working to prevent “an expansion” of conflict after the surprise Hamas attack on Israel, Saudi state media said early yesterday.

Hamas has threatened to execute one hostage every time Israel drops a bomb, without warning, on a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip, Reuters said yesterday, as the increasingly bloody war between the two sides rolls into a fourth day with no end in sight. The group has 150 hostages - including children and a Holocaust survivor - grabbed from border towns and kibbutzim in attacks that began early Saturday.

A salvo of rockets was fired on Tuesday from southern Lebanon towards Israel, three security sources told Reuters, in the third consecutive day of violence along the Lebanese-Israeli border

The United States does not want to see innocent civilians killed anywhere, including in Gaza and Israel, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said today as the first tranche of US security assistance headed to Israel

Israel said on today it had reclaimed control of the Gaza border, pounding the enclave with the fiercest air strikes in the 75-year history of its conflict with the Palestinians despite a Hamas threat to execute a captive for each home hit

Israel's total siege of the Gaza Strip is banned under international law, the United Nations human rights chief said today

When China announced a surprise deal restoring ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran this year, it signalled Beijing's desire to be a diplomatic heavyweight in the Middle East

Around 1,500 bodies of Hamas militants have been found in Israel around the Gaza Strip, the army said Tuesday, as it pummelled the Palestinian enclave with air strikes

Israel appears likely to stage a ground assault on Gaza in response to deadly weekend attacks by Hamas, risking close-quarters fighting in densely populated areas, including in underground tunnels and around hostages.

As Israel’s military sent phone messages telling Palestinians to leave some areas of Gaza after Saturday’s deadly Hamas raid, Mohammad Brais did not know where to seek safety from an assault that residents expect to be the worst they have ever faced.

Israel imposed a total siege on the Gaza Strip yesterday and cut off utility supplies as it kept bombing targets in the crowded Palestinian enclave in response to the Hamas surprise assault.

More than 123,000 people have been displaced in the Gaza Strip since the outbreak of the conflict between Hamas and Israel, the United Nations said yesterday.

A careful campaign of deception ensured Israel was caught off guard when the Palestinian group Hamas launched its devastating attack, enabling a force using bulldozers, hang gliders and motorbikes to take on the Middle East’s most powerful army.