Middle East for the day

The BBC has an article by Yolande Knell about Gaza:

More than twenty people have been killed in the latest air raids on Gaza, Palestinian officials say, as Israel continues its current offensive. The Palestinian health ministry said most died in attacks on a house and a cafe in Khan Younis in the south, bringing the overall death toll to eighty.
Militants in Gaza continued firing rockets into Israel on Thursday, with sirens sounding over southern towns.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned the situation was "on a knife-edge".
The Israeli military said that it had attacked over a hundred targets since midnight and that twelve rockets had been fired at Israel, seven of them intercepted by the Iron Dome defense system.
Israel says its targets in Operation Protective Edge have been militant fighters and facilities including rocket launchers, weapons stores, tunnels, and command centers.
The Palestinian health ministry said seventeen people, including five children and three women, were killed in the strikes on the house and cafe in Khan Younis. Israel has not commented on the incidents.
Elsewhere, three people also died in an Israeli strike on a car in western Gaza City, Palestinian reports say. Reuters said the victims were militants from Islamic Jihad.
The BBC's Yolande Knell reports from Gaza:

On a normal day, the streets of Gaza City are teeming with people and cars honk their horns as they sit in traffic jams. Now they are eerily quiet. Occasionally someone strides past purposefully, or a car or ambulance races by. The shops are all shuttered.
Most people here are staying at home trying to keep safe. Some will also be catching up on sleep after a noisy night when Israeli naval ships bombarded this coastal strip, making buildings shake and babies cry.
Local television stations can hardly keep up with the pace of news from inside busy hospitals and outside demolished homes. They show shocking images of dead children being pulled from the rubble on repeat.
The increasing number of civilians killed is alarming. Some people have moved in with other family members who they deem to live in safer areas. Egypt has opened its border crossing with Gaza for casualties, but otherwise there is no way to leave the Palestinian territory because of the Egyptian and Israeli blockade.

The BBC's James Reynolds reports from Israel's Gaza border:

In the past ten minutes I've seen three rockets fired from Gaza into Israel. There was a flash and giant plumes of white smoke. We don't know where the rockets landed. I did see Israel fire some Iron Dome missiles at them.
It is very clear the conflict here is continuing; we are watching it minute by minute.
I spoke to people in the village of Kfar Aza near here. It was hit twice last night: a family home and an art workshop. No-one was in at the time; some people have gone to stay in other areas. The people there support what the Israeli army is doing. All they want is calm for their community.

Another three people were killed in a strike targeting a Hamas activist in the town of Beit Lahiya, Palestinian officials said. The Palestinian health ministry said that, in addition to the dead, some five hundred people had been injured overall.
Israel says militants have fired nearly four hundred rockets from Gaza and that it has attacked about eight hundred targets over the same time.
An Israeli military spokesman said an attack on a house in Khan Younis in which eight people were killed was "a tragedy and not what we intended", adding people had returned to the building too soon following a telephone warning. The home was said to be that of Odeh Kaware, a local Hamas commander.
Israeli sources say a second warning was given when a projectile without a warhead was fired at the building in a tactic known as a "tap on the roof", but people went back. "They were told to leave, they returned, and the missile was already on the way. It was too late," the Jerusalem Post newspaper quoted an Israeli security source as saying.
The Palestinian Maan news agency said dozens of people had gathered on the roof after the family had been warned by Israel that the building would be targeted.
Separately, Egyptian state television said the government had decided to open the Rafah border crossing to evacuate some of those wounded in the Israeli attacks. Hospitals in North Sinai have been placed on standby and thirty ambulances sent to the crossing.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned of the dangers of escalation, saying the region "cannot afford another full-blown war". "The deteriorating situation is leading to a downward spiral which could quickly get out of control," Ban said. "The risk of violence expanding further still is real." He demanded that Hamas militants stop firing rockets and also urged the Israeli government to exercise restraint.
The UN Security Council is to meet for emergency talks on Thursday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier vowed to "further intensify attacks on Hamas" in Gaza, saying the militants would "pay a heavy price".
Mustafa Barghouti, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, accused Netanyahu of "preparing a ground operation which could bring a huge massacre in Gaza".
Israeli President Shimon Peres told CNN that a ground offensive might happen "quite soon". The army has been authorized to deploy up to forty thousand reservists.

Rico says that, as ever, he has a different solution: put a line of these, tread to tread, and push all of Gaza into the Mediterranean and have done with it: