Israeli PM turns down Hamas ceasefire offer

Hamas said on Sunday that it accepts a UN request for a 24-hour extension of a humanitarian truce in war-torn Gaza, but several hours after Israel resumed its devastating military assault on the enclave after a pause of more than 24 hours.

Although Hamas said its fighters would halt their fire from 1100 GMT in response to a request from the United Nations, there was no response from Israel, prompting the Palestinian group to continue firing rockets.

"They are violating their own ceasefire," charged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during an interview with the CNN news network.

In a separate interview with CBS, Netanyahu said Israel would not allow Hamas "to decide when it's convenient for them to stop for a moment, rearm, and continue firing on our citizens and our people".

Israeli troops resumed their air strikes and tank shelling, killing 10 people across the territory, including an elderly Christian woman, medics said.

Another three people also succumbed to their wounds, hiking the toll on day 20 of Israel's devastating military campaign to 1,062.

The renewed violence came after a rare 12-hour break in the hostilities on Saturday, which was respected by both sides, with world powers urging both Israel and Hamas to extend the temporary truce by another 24 hours.

But Saturday's relative calm quickly became a distant memory.

Israel is 'targeting Christians in Gaza'

"I was praying at church when my father called me and told me to go home quickly," said Antonio Ayad, a Christian whose elderly mother was killed when a missile struck their home in western Gaza City.

"They are targeting Christians in Gaza," he said.

"I'm not Hamas, I'm not Fatah - I don't belong to any Palestinian faction. Where is the world? Where is the pope?" he asked.

The skies over Gaza were filled with the familiar sound of explosions, as plumes of black smoke quickly rose on the horizon, an AFP correspondent in Gaza City said.

Ambulance sirens wailed as medics sprang into action, cars racing down the streets which quickly emptied of people who had ventured out to make the most of the lull.

For Israelis, the quiet skies had ended late on Saturday with sirens sounding up the coastal plain as rockets fell on the south and centre, killing a soldier and raising to 43 the number of troops killed since the July 17 start of a ground operation.

Two Israeli civilians and a Thai agricultural worker have also been killed by rocket fire.

By Sunday morning, there appeared to be little appetite in Israel to prolong the one-sided truce, with 86.5 percent of Israelis opposing any truce in the current climate, army radio said, quoting pollsters Mina Tzemah.

"It is clear that Hamas isn't interested in this ceasefire so I think we should renew the fighting and maybe even more so," said Interior Minister Gilad Erdan, a security cabinet member who had voted late on Saturday in favour of extending the truce by 24 hours.

"After what we've seen last night and this morning, I'm fairly certain that we should renew our fire even stronger," he said, while Israel was initially observing a ceasefire.

Netanyahu said Israeli forces will continue operations to dismantle Hamas' cross-border tunnel network and to destroy its rocket arsenal.

"I would say we want to stop firing rockets for sure. We want to dismantle the tunnel, the terror tunnel network we uncovered. I don't know if we'll have 100 percent success," he said.

"Our soldiers are dealing with it now."

Netanyahu insisted Israel does not deliberately target Palestinian civilians.

"If Hamas is weak and discredited and demilitarized then we may have a chance to work something with the more moderate forces and get a better future for all of us."

Palestinians hospitalised in east Jerusalem

One of two Palestinians who said to have been savagely beaten by a Jewish mob in east Jerusalem was still in intensive care in an Israeli hospital on Sunday, two days after the alleged attack.

Relatives of Amir Shweiki 20, said on Sunday he was being treated at Jerusalem's Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital after being attacked along with Samer Mahfouz, also 20, as they walked near the Jewish settlement neighbourhood of Neve Yaakov on Friday evening.

A spokeswoman for the hospital told AFP that one of the men was "in intensive care but conscious and doing well" while the other was in a surgical ward.

She did not identify them by name on grounds of medical confidentiality.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP that the men alleged they were attacked by Jewish Israelis.

"They gave official testimony that they were attacked by a number of people," he said."We're taking their claims very seriously.

"The investigation is continuing," he added. "We're still looking for suspects."

Haaretz newspaper quoted Mahfouz as saying that he and Shweiki were assaulted by about 12 men.

"They had sticks and iron bars and they hit us over the head," he said.

Tensions between Palestinians and Israelis in annexed east Jerusalem plunged to a new low on July 2 when 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khder was snatched from an east Jerusalem street and later found burned alive.

Police arrested six alleged Jewish extremists as suspects and on July 17 charged three, freeing the others.

At an appearance in the Jerusalem district court on Sunday, Yosef Haim Ben-David, 29, who is charged along with two minors, declared to journalists: "I am the Messiah."

In addition there have been Palestinian protests in and around the city as the toll of dead in Israel's Gaza Strip offensive spirals daily.