17 kids among 87 dead in Gaza, 7 in Israel

LOD, ISRAEL: Israel’s president has warned of a civil war between the country’s Arabs and Jews as fury and fear over shelling exchanges with Palestinian militants in Gaza ignited violence in Israel’s streets.

Appeals by leaders for calm, and police reinforcements and mass arrests, appeared to do little to stem riots in ethnically mixed towns. Israeli TV showed what it described as “near-lynchings” of Jewish and Arab motorists.

The strife was touched off by sometimes violent pro-palestinian protests by angry members of the Arab minority. A synagogue and cars were torched in the Tel Aviv suburb of Lod, and motorists were stoned on some roads.

President Reuven Rivlin made an appeal for calm, saying “please stop this madness”. “We are endangered by rockets launched at our citizens, and we are busying ourselves with a senseless civil war,” he lamented.

AFP Israeli soldiers fire a 155mm self-propelled howitzer towards the Gaza Strip from the southern Israeli city of Sderot on Thursday. Hamas sent a heavy barrage of rockets deep into Israel and Israel pounded Gaza with more airstrikes as tensions continued to escalate.