US supports Israel in strikes

White House spokesman Josh Earnest urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stay in contact with Palestinians to resolve the conflict Tuesday, but said the US supported the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

"We strongly condemn the continuing rocket fire into Israel and the deliberate targeting of civilians by terrorist organizations in Gaza," Earnest said on Tuesday. "No country can accept rocket fire aimed at civilians, and we support Israel's right to defend itself against these vicious attacks," Earnest added.

Israel's government has announced that it gave permission to call up some 40,000 more reservists for "Operation Protective Edge," which was launched Tuesday with a series of airstrikes following rockets from the Gaza Strip.

Over 20 Palestinians were reported killed in Israeli airstrikes on Tuesday, according to emergency services spokesperson Ashraf al-Qudra.

Earlier in the day, the Palestinian political faction Hamas had announced that an Israeli strike on a residential building in the southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis, killing six people, with children among the dead. The AFP news agency also quoted an emergency services spokesman as saying that children were among the injured.

"The Khan Yunis massacre ... of children is a horrendous war crime, and all Israelis have now become legitimate targets for the resistance," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said. According to local residents, the deaths happened when the house came under attack for a second time on Tuesday. Israel also killed several Palestinians in airstrikes on Monday.

The tensions were touched off over a week ago following the murder of three Israeli teenagers by unknown parties and the killing of a Palestinian boy in an apparent attempt at revenge.

'The reconciliation process'

Hamas claimed responsibility for several attacks on Tuesday, including rockets fired into Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The US State Department called on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to lean on leaders of Hamas, which recently joined a unity government with the Palestinian Authority.

"We certainly expect President Abbas to do everything in his power to prevent rocket attacks and to condemn violence, and he has made a range of those calls," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. "But we're conveying the same message to him as well about the need to exercise restraint and de-escalate the situation on the ground." As for the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Psaki added that "it's difficult to see how the reconciliation process can move forward in the current atmosphere."

Emergency services in Gaza announced that airstrikes by Israel had killed about 20 people, at least five of them children, and wounded more than 100 others on Tuesday. The IDF reported that militants had fired 130 rockets at southern Israel without causing any casualties, while the air force struck 150 targets in Gaza.

mkg/kms (Reuters, AFP, dpa, AP)