Israel responded to the death of an Israeli in a rocket attack from the Gaza Strip by stepping up air strikes today that raised to 17 the number of Palestinians killed in the territory in the past two days.
Most of the Palestinian dead were militants but also included a six-month-old boy.
"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 and the occupied West Bank to try to push along peace talks.
But Mr Olmert appeared to suggest a major Israeli ground operation in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip was not imminent, saying Israel's fight against militants was a "long process" and it had "no magic formula" to halt frequent rocket attacks.
Six Palestinians, at least five of them militants, were killed in air strikes today in the Gaza Strip, medical workers said.
Yesterday, after five senior Hamas men died in an Israeli air attack on their van, a rocket fired by the Islamist group at the Israeli border town of Sderot killed an Israeli civilian, the first such death since May.
The Israeli military said 21 rockets and 12 mortar bombs were fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip today.
Three people were wounded and Israel's internal security minister, visiting Sderot, scrambled for cover as a siren sounded. Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is negotiating with Israel, said in a statement its military actions "meant only one thing: the Israeli government ... aims to destroy the peace process".
Mr Olmert said at the end of a four-day visit to Japan "the continuous shooting of Qassam rockets against uninvolved, innocent civilians is a major threat to the stability" of Israel's political contacts with Mr Abbas's Palestinian Authority.
He said, however, that he planned to hold another of his regular meetings with Mr Abbas within the next two weeks.