Israel says prefers diplomacy but ready to invade Gaza

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel bombed dozens of targets in the Gaza Strip on Monday and said that while it was prepared to step up its offensive by sending in troops, it preferred a diplomatic solution that would end Palestinian rocket fire.

Mediator Egypt said a deal for a truce to end the fighting could be close. The leader of Hamas said it was up to Israel to end the new conflict it had started. Israel says its strikes are to halt Palestinian rocket attacks.

Israeli attacks on the sixth day of fighting raised the number of Palestinian dead to 101, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said, listing 24 children among them. Hospital officials in Gaza said more than half of those killed were non-combatants. Three Israeli civilians died on Thursday in a rocket strike.

Militants in the Gaza Strip fired 110 rockets at southern Israel on Monday, causing no casualties, police said.

For the second straight day, Israeli missiles blasted a tower block in the city of Gaza housing international media. Two people were killed there, one of them an Islamic Jihad militant.

Khaled Meshaal, exiled leader of Hamas, said a truce was possible but the Islamist group, in charge of the Gaza Strip since 2007, would not accept Israeli demands and wanted Israel to halt its strikes first and lift its blockade of the enclave.

"Whoever started the war must end it," he told a news conference in Cairo, adding that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces an election in January, had asked for a truce, an assertion a senior Israeli official denied.

Meshaal said Netanyahu feared the domestic consequences of a "land war" of the kind Israel launched four years ago: "He can do it, but he knows that it will not be a picnic and that it could be his political death and cost him the elections."

For Israel, Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon has said that "if there is quiet in the south and no rockets and missiles are fired at Israel's citizens, nor terrorist attacks engineered from the Gaza Strip, we will not attack."

Yaalon also said Israel wanted an end to Gaza guerrilla activity in the neighboring Egyptian Sinai peninsula.

Although 84 percent of Israelis supported the current Gaza assault, according to a poll by Israel's Haaretz newspaper, only 30 percent wanted an invasion, while 19 percent wanted their government to work on securing a truce soon.

DIPLOMACY "PREFERRED"

"Israel is prepared and has taken steps, and is ready for a ground incursion which will deal severely with the Hamas military machine," a senior official close to Netanyahu told Reuters.

"We would prefer to see a diplomatic solution that would guarantee the peace for Israel's population in the south. If that is possible, then a ground operation would no longer be required. If diplomacy fails, we may well have no alternative but to send in ground forces," he added.

Egypt, where newly elected President Mohamed Mursi has his roots in the Muslim Brotherhood seen as mentors to Hamas, is acting as a mediator in the biggest test yet of Cairo's 1979 peace treaty with Israel since the fall of Hosni Mubarak.

"I think we are close, but the nature of this kind of negotiation, (means) it is very difficult to predict," Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil, who visited Gaza on Friday in a show of support for its people, said in an interview in Cairo for the Reuters Middle East Investment Summit.

Egypt has been hosting leaders of both Hamas and Islamic Jihad, a smaller armed faction.

Israeli media said a delegation from Israel had also been to Cairo for truce talks. A spokesman for Netanyahu's government declined comment on the matter.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Cairo to weigh in on ceasefire efforts. Egypt's foreign minister is expected to visit Gaza on Tuesday with a delegation of Arab ministers.

THOUSANDS MOURN FAMILY

Thousands turned out on Gaza's streets to mourn four children and five women, among 11 people killed in an Israeli strike that flattened a three-storey home the previous day.

The bodies were wrapped in Palestinian and Hamas flags. Echoes of explosions mixed with cries of grief and defiant chants of "God is greatest".

The deaths of the 11 in an air strike drew more international calls for an end to six days of hostilities and could test Western support for an offensive Israel billed as self-defense after years of cross-border rocket attacks.

Israel said it was investigating its air strike that brought the home crashing down on the al-Dalu family, where the dead spanned four generations. Some Israeli newspapers said the wrong house may have been mistakenly targeted.

In scenes recalling Israel's 2008-2009 winter invasion of the coastal enclave, tanks, artillery and infantry have massed in field encampments along the sandy, fenced-off border and military convoys moved on roads in the area.

Israel has also authorized the call-up of 75,000 military reservists, so far mobilizing around half that number.

The Gaza fighting adds to worries of world powers watching an already combustible region, where several Arab autocrats have been toppled in popular revolts for the past two years and a civil war in Syria threatens to spread beyond its borders.

In the absence of any prospect of permanent peace between Israel and Islamist factions such as Hamas, mediated deals for each to hold fire unilaterally have been the only formula for stemming bloodshed in the past.

Israel's declared goal is to deplete Gaza arsenals and force Hamas to stop rocket fire that has hit Israeli border towns for years.

Hamas and other groups in Gaza are sworn enemies of the Jewish state which they refuse to recognize and seek to eradicate, claiming all Israeli territory as rightfully theirs.

Hamas won legislative elections in the Palestinian Territories in 2006. A year later, after the collapse of a unity government under President Mahmoud Abbas, the Islamist group seized Gaza in a brief civil war with Abbas's forces.

(Writing by Jeffrey Heller, Dan Williams and Peter Graff; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)

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Motor Racing: Red Bull worried by alternator failures

AUSTIN, Texas: Red Bull team chief Christian Horner admits their latest alternator failure, suffered by Australian Mark Webber, in Sunday's United States Grand Prix is a worry ahead of the drivers' title showdown in Brazil next weekend.

Webber's alternator failure was the team's third this season and came in the race in which they celebrated clinching a third consecutive constructors' championship.

Webber was forced to retire from third place on lap 17 and the disappointment not only put a damper on their celebrations in Texas, but also forced Renault to announce on Monday that they will supply their latest specification alternator for the Interlagos race.

"It is just a worry, full stop," said Horner. "Unfortunately it is the third alternator (failure in a race) that we have had, and obviously there have been other failures in other cars. We need to get it back to look in to it.

"I think the new version has raced on other engine cycles (at other teams), so hopefully that is what we will have for Brazil."

Renault's head of trackside operations Remi Taffin explained their plans for Brazil.

He said: "It is very simple. We go for the new spec. It has passed all the tests."

On Sunday, at the Circuit of the Americas, Red Bull elected not to use the newer specification, which was raced by other Renault-powered teams, because it felt safer using the older specification.

Asked why that decision had been made if the newer units had passed all reliability tests, Taffin said: "Because they are human beings and at some point as humans they have some feelings.

"It was a common decision, so we put everything on the table and we decided altogether we should go that way. We had everything to fit either the old or new design.

"But the feeling was generally that there is some sense to keep on using something that we have known for years with low mileage and stuff like that, even if we had a new solution that we knew had gone through all the tests.

"Maybe it is a bit more difficult to understand, but put yourself in the situation where you have to make a decision. Sometimes you go into a shop and there are two different things and your head says you should buy this one but your heart says you should buy the other one."

Defending champion German Sebastian Vettel, who holds a 13-point lead in this year's title race ahead of fellow two-time champion Spaniard Fernando Alonso of Ferrari ahead of this week's showdown, retired from the lead of the European Grand Prix in Valencia with an alternator failure and had repeat failures at the Italian Grand Prix during practice and in the race.

It was after Monza that Renault reverted the team back to older specification parts that had proved to be trouble-free while it worked on updates.

- AFP/fa

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Katju condemns arrest, fires emails to Maharashtra CM

NEW DELHI: Former Supreme Court judge and Press Council chairman Justice Markandey Katju fired two emails of protest within hours of each other on Monday to the Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan strongly condemning the arrest of two girls from Palghar town, located 87km north of Mumbai, for criticizing on Facebook the state "bandh" following Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray's death. He has demanded action against those involved their arrest. The girls were released on bail later.

Katju wrote, "To my mind it is absurd to say that protesting against a bandh hurts religious sentiments. Under Article 19(1)(a) of our Constitution freedom of speech is a guaranteed fundamental right. We are living in a democracy, not a fascist dictatorship. In fact this arrest itself appears to be a criminal act since under sections 341 and 342 it is a crime to wrongfully arrest or wrongfully confine someone who has committed no crime."

"Hence if the facts reported are correct, I request you to immediately order the suspension, arrest, chargesheeting and criminal prosecution of the police personnel (however high they may be) who ordered as well as implemented the arrest of that woman, failing which I will deem it that you as Chief Minister are unable to run the state in a democratic manner as envisaged by the Constitution to which you have taken oath, and then the legal consequences will follow," he further wrote. The mail was also posted on his blog, Satyam Bruyat, late last afternoon.

When the CM did not reply to his email but only forwarded it to what appears to be an official, Katju responded with a second email which said, "Please realize that silence is not an option for you in the matter. Therefore, I once again request you to tell me, and through me the entire nation, why this arrest of a woman was made in Mumbai just for putting up an apparently innocuous material on the Facebook, and what action you have taken against the delinquent policemen and others involved in this high handedness and blatant misuse of state machinery."

The girl in question had on the weekend posted a status message that reportedly said, "People like Bal Thackeray are born and die daily and one should not observe a bandh for that." A friend "liked" this status update. Both were arrested. The two were later released on bail on Monday.

According to Shaheen Dhadha's (one of the arrested girls) defence lawyer, Sudhir Gupta, the FIR was filed against the girls at 9:00 pm on Sunday night. The complainant was one Bhushan Sankhe. Advocate Gupta says that the police had appeared at Shaheen Dhada's uncle's clinic at 7:15 in the evening, which was followed by 40-50 goons attacking the clinic around an hour later. He also remarked on the significance of the fact that the accused is a Muslim. "I was alerted of the girls' detention on Sunday night. The remand application was filed at 10:35 am on Monday morning," says Advocate Gupta.

He further said that the FIR filed against the girls was under 295 (A) of the IPC and 66 A of the IT Act. The defence counsel later argued in court that since there is no question of religious sentiment or political ideology in this case, 295 (A) does not apply. The girls were charged under 505 (2) of the IPC and 66 A of the IT Act.

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Israeli Airstrike Kills Top Islamic Jihad Commander

An Israeli strike on a Gaza City high-rise today has killed one of the top militant leaders of Islamic Jihad, the Palestinian militant group said.

The second strike in two days on the downtown Gaza City building that houses the Hamas TV station, Al Aqsa, has killed Ramez Harb, who is a leading figure in Al Quds Brigades militant wing, according to a text message Islamic Jihad sent to reporters.

Witnesses told the AP that the Israeli airstrike, part of a widening effort to suppress Hamas rocket fire into Israel, struck the building Monday afternoon, and ambulances quickly rushed to the scene. Paramedics told the AP that one person was killed and several wounded.

It is also the second high profile commander taken out in the Israeli offensive, which began six days with a missile strike that killed Ahmed Jibari, Hamas' top military commander.

Today mourners buried the 11 victims of an Israeli air strike on Sunday, the single deadliest incident since the escalation between Hamas and Israel began Wednesday. Among the dead were nine members of the Daloo family, killed when an Israeli warplane targeted their home in Gaza City while trying to kill a Hamas rocket maker, whose fate is unknown.

Palestinian deaths climbed to 96 Monday when four more, including two children, were killed in a strike on a sports stadium the Israel Defense Forces said was being used to launch rockets. Gaza health officials said half of those killed were children, women or elderly men.

With the death toll rising, Egypt accelerated efforts to broker a cease-fire, but so far the two sides are far apart. Egypt is being supported by Qatar and Turkey in its peacemaking mission and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is scheduled to arrive at the talks later today.

Israel carried out 80 air strikes this morning, down from previous morning totals. There were 75 militant rocket launches, the Israeli military said, also a relatively low tally. The Israel Defense Forces said that since Wednesday, around 1,100 strikes had been carried out in Gaza while militants have launched about 1,000 rockets towards Israel.

Three Israeli civilians died from militant rocket fire in one attack Thursday and dozens have been wounded.

Sunday proved to be one the deadliest days of what Israel has called "Operation Pillar of Defense" with at least 23 Palestinians reported killed. Of those, at least 14 were women and children, according to a Gaza health official. The Israel Defense Forces told ABC News it was targeting Hamas rocket maker Yehiya Bia, who lives near the Daloo family in a densely populated Gaza neighborhood and has not been accounted for.

Israel shifted its tactics this weekend from striking rocket arsenals and firing positions to targeting the homes of senior Hamas commanders and the offices of Hamas politicians in Gaza. Doing so brought the violence into Gaza's most densely populated areas.

Israel hit two high-rise buildings Sunday that house the offices of Hamas and international media outlets, injuring at least six journalists.

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Israeli air strike kills 11 civilians in Gaza: Hamas

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - At least 11 Palestinian civilians, including four children, were killed on Sunday in what Hamas said was an Israeli air strike on a Gaza apartment building, the highest death toll in a single incident in five days of fighting.

Israel gave off signs of a possible ground invasion of the Hamas-run enclave as the next stage in its air and sea offensive billed as a bid to stop Palestinian rocket fire into the Jewish state, while also spelling out its conditions for a truce.

U.S. President Barack Obama said that while Israel had a right to defend itself against rocket salvoes, it would be "preferable" to avoid a military thrust into the Gaza Strip, a narrow, densely populated coastal territory. Such an assault would risk high casualties and an international outcry.

A spokesman for the Hamas-run Interior Ministry said an Israeli missile wrecked the three-storey residential building, killing 11 people, all of them civilians. Medics said four women and four children were among the dead.

The Israeli military had no immediate comment. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier that he had assured world leaders that Israel was doing its utmost to avoid causing civilian casualties in the military showdown with Hamas.

"The massacre of the Dalu family will not pass without punishment," Hamas's armed wing said in a statement.

For their part, Gaza militants launched dozens of rockets into Israel and targeted its commercial capital, Tel Aviv, for a fourth day. The Jewish state's "Iron Dome" missile shield shot down two of the rockets fired toward Tel Aviv, Israel's biggest city, but falling debris from the interception hit a car, which caught fire. Its driver was not hurt.

In scenes recalling Israel's 2008-2009 winter incursion into Gaza, tanks, artillery and infantry massed in field encampments along the sandy, fenced-off border. Military convoys moved on roads in the area newly closed to civilian traffic.

Netanyahu said Israel was ready to widen its offensive.

"We are exacting a heavy price from Hamas and the terrorist organizations and the Israel Defence Forces are prepared for a significant expansion of the operation," he said at a cabinet meeting, giving no further details.

Gaza health official Mufid al-Miklalati said 65 Palestinians - around half of them women and children - have been killed in small, densely populated Gaza began, with hundreds wounded.

More than 500 rockets fired from Gaza have hit Israel since Wednesday, killing three civilians and wounding dozens.

Israel's declared goal is to deplete Gaza arsenals and force the Islamist Hamas to stop rocket fire that has bedeviled Israeli border towns for years and is now displaying greater range, putting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in the crosshairs.

Israel withdrew settlers from Gaza in 2005 and two years later Hamas took control of the impoverished enclave, which the Israelis have kept under blockade.

OBAMA CAUTIONS AGAINST GROUND CAMPAIGN

At a news conference during a visit to Bangkok, Obama said Israel has "every right to expect that it does not have missiles fired into its territory".

He added: "If this can be accomplished without a ramping up of military activity in Gaza that is preferable. That's not just preferable for the people of Gaza, it's also preferable for Israelis because if Israeli troops are in Gaza they're much more at risk of incurring fatalities or being wounded," he said.

Obama said he had been in regular contact with Egyptian and Turkish leaders - to secure their mediation in bring about a halt to rocket barrages by Hamas and other Islamist militants.

"We're going to have to see what kind of progress we can make in the next 24, 36, 48 hours," he added.

In other air raids on Sunday, two Gaza City media buildings were hit, witnesses said. Eight journalists were wounded and facilities belonging to Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV as well as Britain's Sky News were damaged.

An employee of the Beirut-based al Quds television station lost his leg in the attack, local medics said.

The Israeli military said the strike targeted a rooftop "transmission antenna used by Hamas to carry out terror activity", and that journalists in the building had effectively been used as human shields by Gaza's rulers.

Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi said in Cairo, as his security deputies sought to broker a truce with Hamas leaders, that "there are some indications that there is a possibility of a ceasefire soon, but we do not yet have firm guarantees".

Egypt has mediated previous ceasefire deals between Israel and Hamas, the latest of which unraveled with recent violence.

A Palestinian official told Reuters the truce discussions would continue in Cairo on Sunday, saying "there is hope", but that it was too early to say whether the efforts would succeed.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will be in Egypt on Monday for talks with Mursi, the foreign ministry in Cairo said. U.N. diplomats earlier said Ban was expected in Israel and Egypt this week to push for an end to the fighting.

The head of the Arab League and a group of Arab foreign ministers will visit Gaza on Tuesday to show solidarity with the Palestinians, officials said in Cairo.

Asked on Israel Radio about progress in the Cairo talks, Silvan Shalom, one of Netanyahu's deputies, said: "There are contacts, but they are currently far from being concluded."

Listing Israel's terms for ceasing fire, Moshe Yaalon, another deputy to the prime minister, wrote on Twitter: "If there is quiet in the south and no rockets and missiles are fired at Israel's citizens, nor terrorist attacks engineered from the Gaza Strip, we will not attack."

WESTERN SUPPORT

Israel's operation in the Gaza Strip has so far drawn Western support for what U.S. and European leaders have called its right to self-defense, but there was also a growing number of appeals from them to seek an end to the hostilities.

British Foreign Minister William Hague said on Sky News that he and Prime Minister David Cameron "stressed to our Israeli counterparts that a ground invasion of Gaza would lose Israel a lot of the international support and sympathy that they have in this situation".

Israel's cabinet decided on Friday to double the current reserve troop quota set for the Gaza campaign to 75,000. Some 31,000 soldiers have already been called up, the military said.

A possible sweep into the Gaza Strip and the risk of heavy casualties it brings would be a significant gamble for Netanyahu, favored to win a January election.

The last Gaza war, a three-week Israeli blitz and invasion four years ago, killed 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians. Thirteen Israelis died in the conflict.

The current flare-up around Gaza has fanned the fires of a Middle East ignited by a series of Arab uprisings and a civil war in Syria that threatens to spread beyond its borders.

One significant change has been the election of an Islamist government in Cairo that is allied with Hamas, which may narrow Israel's maneuvering room in confronting the Palestinian group. Israel and Egypt made peace in 1979.

Israel's Iron Dome missile interceptor system has destroyed more than 200 incoming rockets from Gaza in mid-air since Wednesday, saving Israeli towns and cities from potentially significant damage.

However, one rocket salvo unleashed on Sunday evaded Iron Dome and wounded two people when it struck a house in the Mediterranean coastal city of Ashkelon, police said.

(Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem, Ayman Samir in Cairo, Seltem Iyigun in Istanbul, Matt Spetalnick and Jeff Mason in Bangkok, and Tim Castle in London; Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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Iron Dome intercepts two rockets over Tel Aviv

TEL AVIV: Israel's vaunted Iron Dome anti-missile system on Sunday shot down two rockets over Tel Aviv as sirens wailed across the city, in the fourth such interception in one day, police said.

"Sirens sounded in Tel Aviv, and the Iron Dome shot down two rockets," said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.

"There were no reports of injuries or damage on ground level in Tel Aviv or (the surrounding region of) Gush Dan," he added.

Sunday was the fourth straight day sirens sounded across Tel Aviv. Earlier in the day, Israeli police confirmed two rockets had been intercepted over the city by Iron Dome.

Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said they launched a Fajr-5 rocket at Tel Aviv in response to the "occupation's massacre."

Earlier on Sunday, at least seven members of the same family, four of them children, were among nine people killed when an Israeli missile destroyed a family home in Gaza City.

Iranian-made Fajr 5 rockets have a range of up to 75 kilometres (46 miles).

On Thursday, Hamas said it had developed its own longer-range rocket, the M75, which was used to target Jerusalem.

- AFP/fa

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EU drug regulator OKs Novartis' meningitis B shot

LONDON (AP) — Europe's top drug regulator has recommended approval for the first vaccine against meningitis B, made by Novartis AG.

There are five types of bacterial meningitis. While vaccines exist to protect against the other four, none has previously been licensed for type B meningitis. In Europe, type B is the most common, causing 3,000 to 5,000 cases every year.

Meningitis mainly affects infants and children. It kills about 8 percent of patients and leaves others with lifelong consequences such as brain damage.

In a statement on Friday, Andrin Oswald of Novartis said he is "proud of the major advance" the company has made in developing its vaccine Bexsero. It is aimed at children over two months of age, and Novartis is hoping countries will include the shot among the routine ones for childhood diseases such as measles.

Novartis said the immunization has had side effects such as fever and redness at the injection site.

Recommendations from the European Medicines Agency are usually adopted by the European Commission. Novartis also is seeking to test the vaccine in the U.S.

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Israel hits Hamas government buildings, reservists mobilized

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli aircraft bombed Hamas government buildings in Gaza on Saturday, including the prime minister's office, after Israel's cabinet authorized the mobilization of up to 75,000 reservists in preparation for a possible ground invasion.

Palestinian militants in Gaza kept up cross-border salvoes, firing a rocket at Israel's biggest city Tel Aviv for the third straight day. Police said it was destroyed in mid-air by an Iron Dome anti-missile battery deployed hours earlier, and no one was injured.

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that runs the Gaza Strip, said Israeli missiles wrecked the office building of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh - where he had met on Friday with the Egyptian prime minister - and struck a police headquarters.

In the Israeli Mediterranean port of Ashdod, a rocket ripped into several balconies. Police said five people were hurt.

With Israeli tanks and artillery positioned along the Gaza border and no end in sight to hostilities now in their fourth day, Tunisia's foreign minister travelled to the enclave in a show of Arab solidarity.

Officials in Gaza said 41 Palestinians, nearly half of them civilians including eight children and a pregnant woman, had been killed since Israel began its air strikes. Three Israeli civilians were killed by a rocket on Thursday.

In Cairo, a presidential source said Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi would hold four-way talks with the Qatari emir, the prime minister of Turkey and Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal in the Egyptian capital on Saturday to discuss the Gaza crisis.

Egypt has been working to reinstate calm between Israel and Hamas after an informal ceasefire brokered by Cairo unraveled over the past few weeks. Meshaal, who lives in exile, has already held a round of talks with Egyptian security officials.

Israel uncorked its massive air campaign on Wednesday with the declared goal of deterring Hamas from launching rockets that have plagued its southern communities for years. The salvoes recently intensified, and are now displaying greater range.

The operation has drawn Western support for what U.S. and European leaders have called Israel's right to self-defense, along with appeals to both sides to avoid civilian casualties.

Hamas, shunned by the West over its refusal to recognize Israel, says its cross-border attacks have come in response to Israeli strikes against Palestinian fighters in Gaza.

"We have not limited ourselves in means or in time," Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Israel's Channel One television. "We hope that it will end as soon as possible, but that will be only after all the objectives have been achieved."

Hamas says it is committed to continued confrontation with Israel and is eager not to seem any less resolute than smaller, more radical groups that have emerged in Gaza in recent years.

The Islamist movement has ruled Gaza since 2007. Israel pulled settlers out of Gaza in 2005 but maintains a blockade of the tiny, densely populated coastal territory.

RESERVE TROOP QUOTA DOUBLED

At a late night session on Friday, Israel's cabinet decided to more than double the current reserve troop quota set for the Gaza offensive to 75,000, political sources said.

The move did not necessarily mean all would be called up or that an invasion would follow. Tanks and self-propelled guns were seen near the sandy border zone on Saturday, and around 16,000 reservists have already been summoned to active duty.

The Gaza conflagration has stirred the pot of a Middle East already boiling from two years of Arab revolution and a civil war in Syria that threatens to spread beyond its borders.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is expected to visit Israel and Egypt next week to push for an end to the fighting in Gaza, U.N. diplomats said on Friday.

Hamas's armed wing claimed responsibility for Saturday's rocket attack on Tel Aviv, saying it had fired a longer-range, Iranian-designed Fajr-5 at the coastal metropolis, some 70 km (43 miles) north of the Gaza Strip.

After air raid sirens sounded, witnesses saw two white plumes rise into the sky over the southern outskirts of Tel Aviv and heard an explosion when the incoming rocket was hit.

The anti-missile battery had been due to take delivery of its fifth Iron Dome battery early next year but it was rushed into service near Tel Aviv after rockets were launched toward the city on Thursday and Friday. Those attacks caused no damage or casualties.

In Jerusalem, targeted by a Palestinian rocket on Friday for the first time in 42 years, there was little outward sign on the Jewish Sabbath that the attack had any impact on the usually placid pace of life in the holy city.

In Gaza, some families abandoned their homes - some of them damaged and others situated near potential Israeli targets - and packed into the houses of friends and relatives.

ISRAEL'S GAZA TARGETS

The Israeli army said it had zeroed in on a number of government buildings during the night, including Haniyeh's office, the Hamas Interior Ministry and a police compound.

Taher al-Nono, a spokesman for the Hamas government, held a news conference near the rubble of the prime minister's office and pledged: "We will declare victory from here."

A three-storey house belonging to Hamas official Abu Hassan Salah was also hit and totally destroyed early on Saturday. Rescuers said at least 30 people were pulled from the rubble.

In Washington, U.S. President Barack Obama commended Egypt's efforts to help defuse the Gaza violence in a call to Mursi on Friday, the White House said in a statement, and underscored his hope of restoring stability there.

On Friday, Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil paid a high-profile visit to Gaza, denouncing what he called Israeli aggression and saying Cairo was prepared to mediate a truce.

Egypt's Islamist government, freely elected after U.S.-backed autocrat Hosni Mubarak fell to a popular uprising last year, is allied with Hamas but Cairo is also party to a 1979 peace treaty with Israel.

In a call to Netanyahu, Obama discussed options for "de-escalating" the situation, the White House said, adding that the president "reiterated U.S. support for Israel's right to defend itself, and expressed regret over the loss of Israeli and Palestinian civilian lives".

Hamas fighters are no match for the Israeli military. The last Gaza war, involving a three-week long Israeli air blitz and ground invasion over the New Year period of 2008-09, killed over 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians. Thirteen Israelis died.

But few believe Israeli military action can snuff out militant rocket fire entirely without a reoccupation of Gaza, an option all but ruled out because it would risk major casualties and an international outcry.

While Hamas rejects the Jewish state's existence, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who rules in areas of the nearby West Bank not occupied by Israelis, does recognize Israel but peace talks between the two sides have been frozen since 2010.

(Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell, Jeffrey Heller and Ori Lewis in Jerusalem and Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations; Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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British electricals retailer Comet to shut 41 stores

LONDON: British electrical goods chain Comet, which went into administration at the start of November, said on Saturday it would close 41 stores by the end of the month if a buyer could not be found.

"A closing down sale with increased discounts has, therefore, begun in 27 stores Saturday and will begin in a further 14 stores early next week," administrators Deloitte said in a statement.

"While the administrators will look to redeploy staff from any stores which do face closure to other stores nearby, there will inevitably be redundancies."

Comet runs around 240 stores across Britain and operates online.

Deloitte had already announced 330 redundancies but there have been no job losses among shop staff so far.

The collapse of Comet marks one of the biggest high street casualties since the demise of Woolworths in 2008.

Comet was founded in 1933 as a two-man business charging batteries for wireless radios.

Electrical retailers operating out of stores are facing dual pressure from tough economic conditions and online competition, while other retailers are also feeling the pinch.

British retail chains had shut an average of 20 stores per day in the first six months of 2012, according to consultants PricewaterhouseCoopers.

- AFP/de

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Bal Thackeray dies, life comes to a halt in Maharashtra

MUMBAI: Life virtually came to a halt in several parts of Maharashtra following the death of Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray today.

Shopkeepers and hoteliers downed shutters immediately after the news of his death.

There were some stray incidents of stone pelting in some areas in Mumbai and Thane. Taxis and autos were off the roads while local trains and BEST buses were plying in Mumbai though BEST authorities suspended operations in select areas where incidents of stone pelting were reported.

Officegoers tried to rush back to their homes as the news of Thackeray's death spread.

The central railway has cancelled the mega block on both Central and Harbour lines in Mumbai on Sunday to help the people to attend the last rites of the departed leader.

Cabs and autos which remained off the roads today at the airport would also not operate tomorrow as a mark of respect for the departed leader, authorities said.

Reports coming from many cities including Pune, Nashik, Aurangabad and parts of Konkan said that shops and restaurants remained closed there and autos were off the roads after the news of Thackeray's death was received.

There were stray incidents of pelting of stones on BEST buses at Pantnagar in suburban Ghatkopar, Naupada (Thane), Prateeksha Nagar, Kamothe (Navi Mumbai). The BEST suspended its operations in Mulund, Bhandup, Kandivali, Sion, Shivaji Nagar, Jogeshwari (E) and Kalanagar in Bandra. However, the transport undertaking said that it would operate its bus services tomorrow for the convenience of people who would come to pay last respects to Thackeray.

20,000 police personnel deployed

Security was beefed up across Maharashtra, particularly in Mumbai where 20,000 police personnel were deployed, to keep a tight vigil following the death of Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray here today.

"The entire police force is on an alert in Maharashtra. Lakhs of people are expected to visit Mumbai to take a last glimpse of Thackeray," a senior police official at Maharashtra Police Headquarters said.

In Mumbai alone, over 20,000 city police, 15 companies of State Reserve Police Force and three contingents of Rapid Action Force have been deployed.

"The funeral procession will begin tomorrow at 7 AM. We have deployed enough number of police force at Sena Bhavan in Dadar, Matoshree in Bandra and at Shivaji Park where the last respects would be paid," Mumbai Police commissioner Satyapal Singh said.

"I appeal to people to remain calm and maintain law and order. Citizens should step out of the houses only if it is urgent. There would be traffic restrictions, particularly in Bandra and Dadar areas," Singh added.

Police have made an appeal to motorists to avoid Western Express Highway as roads connecting Kalanagar area, where Thackeray's residence is located, have been cordoned off.

The entire city wore a deserted look as shops, hotels, restaurants and other commercial establishments were closed and there was sparse traffic on the streets.

"We did not ask anybody to keep their shops shut. People are doing it voluntarily," Singh said.

Appropriate arrangements have been made at the Shivaji Park where VIPs are also expected to reach to pay homage tomorrow, Singh added.

Tributes

Personalities across the political spectrum and social sphere today condoled the death of Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray.

"Maharashtra has lost a veteran, experienced leader....He was a politician, cartoonist, editor, organiser as well as art-lover and orator," chief minister Prithviraj Chavan said.

Union home minister Sushilkumar Shinde said that Thackeray, as cartoonist, arrived on the scene like a storm after the collapse of communists in Mumbai, and took forward the legacy of his reformist father, 'Prabodhankar' Thackeray.

Shinde said he knew Thackeray for over four decades, and always felt he will survive the current bout of illness.

"He considered King Shivaji his idol. He worked for the people all his life. We took inspiration from him while governing in Maharashtra," said BJP chief Nitin Gadkari, who served as a PWD minister in the saffron alliance government in the state between 1995-1999.

State PWD minister Chhangan Bhujbal, a former Sena leader who later switched loyalties to the Congress and then NCP, said Thackeray created history by founding Shiv Sena and taking it to great heights politically.

"He was fearless while speaking...word 'compromise' never existed in his dictionary," Bhujbal said.

NCP chief Sharad Pawar's daughter and MP Supriya Sule said the Pawar family had very close relations with the Thackerays, though in the political arena the two rivals never spared each other.

"There were political differences for sure. But Pawar and Thackeray were the best of friends in the personal sphere. Thackeray helped a lot ahead of my marriage," she reminisced.

Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi said Thackeray was a strong patriot and a good cartoonist who carved an identity of his own in Maharashtra. "He had great affection towards me and was a guide for me," Modi said, offering his condolences.

Singer Asha Bhosale said she had lots of memories and it was a "sad day" for her. Lata Mangeshkar said Maharashtra has been "orphaned" today.

Tamil superstar Rajnikant described Thackeray as a great personality, and said he has lost a "father figure".

The 86-year-old cartoonist-turned-politician breathed his last at 3.30pm today at his residence Matoshree in suburban Bandra.

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