Death toll in Gaza soars to 181 as Israeli attack continues

Smoke rises amid a flare-up of Israeli-Palestinian violence, in Gaza yesterday.

* Conflict erupted on Monday, still no sign of end * US and Arab diplomats pushing to restore calm * Israel strikes home of Gaza leader Yehya Al-Sinwar Israeli air strikes killed 33 Palestinians, including 13 children, in Gaza early on Sunday, Gaza health officials said, and militants fired rockets into Israel as hostilities stretched into a seventh day. The pre-dawn attacks were on houses in the centre of Gaza City, health officials said. The death toll in Gaza jumped to 181, including 52 children, since the fighting erupted last Monday. In Israel, 10 people including two children have been killed in rocket attacks by Hamas and other militant groups. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reminded all sides "that any indiscriminate targeting of civilian and media structures violates international law and must be avoided at all costs,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement on Saturday. Both Israel and Hamas insisted they would continue their cross-border fire after Israel destroyed a 12-storey building in Gaza City that housed the US Associated Press and Qatar-based Al Jazeera media operations. The Israel military said the al-Jala building was a legitimate military target, containing Hamas military offices, and that it had given advance warnings to civilians to get out of the building. The AP condemned the attack, and asked Israel to put forward evidence. "We have had no indication Hamas was in the building or active in the building," it said in a statement. In a burst of air strikes early on Sunday, the Israeli military said it struck the home of Yehya Al-Sinwar in the southern Gaza City of Khan Younis. Sinwar, who was released from an Israeli prison in 2011, heads the political and military wings of Hamas in Gaza. In a burst of air strikes early on Sunday, the Israeli military said it struck the home of Yehya Al-Sinwar in the southern Gaza City of Khan Younis. Sinwar, who was released from an Israeli prison in 2011, heads the political and military wings of Hamas in Gaza. Another air strike killed a Gaza neurologist and wounded his wife and daughter, Palestinian medics and relatives said. Hamas began its rocket assault on Monday after weeks of tensions over a court case to evict several Palestinian families in East Jerusalem, and in retaliation for Israeli police clashes with Palestinians near the city's Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third holiest site, during the holy month of Ramadan. Israel has launched more than 1,000 air and artillery strikes into the densely populated coastal strip, saying they were aimed at Hamas and other militant targets. Earlier this week, the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, told Reuters the court was "monitoring very closely" the latest hostilities, amid an investigation now under way into alleged war crimes in earlier bouts of the conflict. There has been a flurry of US diplomacy in recent days to try to quell the violence. President Joe Biden's envoy, Hady Amr, arrived in Israel on Friday for talks. Biden spoke with both Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas late on Saturday, the White House said. In Israel, the conflict has been accompanied by violence among the country's mixed communities of Jews and Arabs. There has also been an upsurge in deadly clashes in the occupied West Bank. At least 12 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops in the West Bank since Friday, most of them during clashes.