ISRAELI JETS HIT GAZA, DESTROY TOWER HOUSING MEDIA OFFICES

Israeli air strikes pounded the Gaza Strip Saturday, killing 10 members of an extended family and demolishing a building housing international media outlets, as Palestinians fired back barrages of rockets.

On the sixth day since the conflict escalated, the death toll rose and violence also swept the occupied West Bank as a US envoy prepared to hold talks with officials seeking a de-escalation.

Despite intensifying diplomatic efforts, Israel’s fighter jets struck several sites in the densely-populated Gaza Strip which it has blockaded for more than a decade, while Palestinian Islamists unleashed rockets again towards Israel.

Balls of flame reached high into the sky as Israel’s air force on Saturday afternoon flattened a 13-floor building housing Qatar-based Al Jazeera television and the Associated Press in the Gaza Strip, after giving a warning to evacuate.

Israel claimed that “military intelligence” of Hamas, the Gaza Strip’s Islamist rulers, were also in the building.

Earlier, an Israeli strike on a three-storey building in the Shati refugee camp killed 10 members of an extended family -- two related mothers and their four children each. Israel’s army said the building was used by “Hamas terror organisation senior officials”.

GAZA CITY, GAZA STRIP: