Israel Defiant on Gaza Onslaught Amid International Outcry

Israel vowed to press its campaign against militants in the Gaza Strip on Sunday despite an international outcry over the deadly onslaught that prompted even the moderate Palestinian leadership to cut off all peace talks.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed to continue the ground and air operation that has killed 73 Palestinians since Saturday following the death of one Israeli civilian last week and earned the Jewish state international condemnation for disproportionate use of force.

Even Israel's closest ally the United States called for a halt to the violence and a return to the negotiating table.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas suspended all contacts with Israel over the assault, which apart from killing dozens of militants has also claimed the lives of many Palestinian women and children.

The announcement came just days before US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is to arrive in the region on her latest attempt to push forward the troubled peace negotiations revived just three months ago.

"The negotiations are suspended, as are all contacts on all levels, because in light of the Israeli aggression such communication has no meaning," Abbas's spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said.

The two sides revived peace talks to great fanfare at a conference in the United States in late November, but have made almost no progress since then, while violence in and around the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip has sharply escalated.

The White House urged both sides to resume the talks.

"The violence needs to stop and the talks need to resume," National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe told reporters at President George W. Bush's ranch in Texas.

Ten more Palestinians, including two civilian, were killed on Sunday, medics and witnesses said, amid the continuing air and ground blitz that Israel says is aimed at halting militant rocket fire against its territory that killed one Israeli civilian last week.

Apart from 63 Palestinians, two Israeli soldiers were also killed in Saturday's fighting and two more were wounded on Sunday, the army said of its Operation Hot Winter.

Despite the heaviest offensive since Israel's Gaza pullout in 2000, militants fired at least 24 rockets at southern Israel on Sunday. Police said one person was injured when his home took a direct hit in the town of Ashkelon.

Late on Sunday, two militants were killed in an air strike on the northern Gaza town of Jabaliya that has borne the brunt of the violence, witnesses said. The army said its target was an arms workshop.

A Palestinian civilian also died of wounds sustained in a raid earlier in the day, medics said.

Olmert rejected a mounting chorus of international criticism that Israel was using excessive force in one of the world's most densely populated and impoverished territories.

"We must remember that Israel is protecting its citizens in the south of the country and that with all due respect, nothing will prevent us from this duty," he said at a weekly cabinet meeting.

The Hamas-run administration in Gaza called for the formation of an emergency Palestinian unity government eight months after the Islamist movement drove forces loyal to Abbas from the territory.

Defence Minister Ehud Barak was to hold a meeting on Monday to determine the legality of targeting residential areas being used by militants to fire rockets at Israel, his office said.

In the occupied West Bank, a 13-year-old Palestinian boy was shot dead by Israeli troops during a demonstration in which youths protesting the Gaza assault threw stones at soldiers, medics said.

The UN Security Council, meeting at Abbas's request, condemned the violence and urged both sides to respect their obligations under international law.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon slammed Israel's "disproportionate and excessive use of force," while EU president Slovenia urged Israel "to exercise maximum restraint and refrain from all activities that endanger civilians."

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged Islamic states to make an "outcry" over the onslaught, saying that silence was not acceptable.

At least 307 people have been killed in Israeli-Palestinian violence, most of them Gaza militants, since the relaunch of peace talks in November, 102 of them since Wednesday alone, according to an AFP tally.