64 Palestinians martyred in Gaza

The Zionist regime pressed its crimes against Palestinian people in Gaza with a land incursion and a surge of air strikes on Saturday, which led to massacre of at least 64 Palestinians, medical officials said.

Dr Muawiya Hassanein, head of Gaza emergency medical services, told reporters at least 60 people were martyred as a great number of rockets fired by the regime's planes slammed into the northern Gaza Strip.

Many civilians were among the martyres and about 200 people were wounded, several of them critically, he said.

Tanks supported by helicopters moved into the area in and around the crowded town and refugee camp of Jabaliya and nearby Tufah in northern Gaza just after midnight, witnesses said.

By midday troops had pushed nearly three kilometres (two miles) inside the Gaza Strip, according to witnesses.

The urban battlefields were littered with debris as frightened residents hid inside their homes and Koranic verses over mosque loudspeakers were read.

"We are in the middle of a total war. We hear the rockets and the explosions everywhere... we cannot leave our homes," Jabaliya resident Abu Alaa, 40, said. "They're shooting at everything that moves."

News photographers were hemmed in by the Jabaliya fighting and came under Israeli fire, a trapped AFP photographer said.

A Palestinian working for the local media group was hurt by an Israeli shell blast.

Saturday's incursion toll made it the deadliest raid on Gaza in well over a year which left more than 64 people martyred, including several children.