Israeli soldiers battled Palestinian fighters on Wednesday in Gaza, where some 1,000 people have now been killed in the war on Hamas. Another 4,500 Palestinians have been wounded.
At least three Palestinians were killed across the Gaza Strip overnight as Israel pounded the coastal enclave with more than 60 air and naval strikes, the army said, according to AFP. Israeli warplanes blasted Gaza's southern border with Egypt with some three dozen bombing raids, witnesses said.
On the diplomatic front, UN chief Ban Ki-moon arrived in Cairo at the start of a regional tour aimed at stopping the "unacceptable" violence. Ban arrived in Cairo on the first stop of his tour that will take him to Jordan, Israel, the West Bank city of Ramallah, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Kuwait, where he was to attend an Arab League summit next Monday.
Ban has repeatedly appealed for an end to the fighting aroud Gaza. "My message is simple, direct and to the point: the fighting must stop," Ban said in his first press conference of the year. "Too many people have died. There has been too much civilian suffering."
Meanwhile, a senior source in Cairo indicated Egypt was getting increasingly frustrated at Hamas' response so far to its initiative, saying "they need to say 'yes', now, to our plan." A top Hamas leader, Mussa Abu Marzuk, acknowledged the movement had "substantial observations" about the initiative but said there was "still a chance" they would accept it.
