Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, facing international alarm over a rising civilian death toll in Gaza, said yesterday he would not accept any ceasefire that stopped Israel completing the destruction of militants’ infiltration tunnels.

The Israeli military estimated on Wednesday that accomplishing that task, already into its fourth week, would take several more days.

“We are determined to complete this mission, with or without a ceasefire,” Netanyahu said in public remarks at a meeting of his full Cabinet in Tel Aviv.

“I won’t agree to any proposal that will not enable the Israeli military to finish this important task, for the sake of Israel’s security,” he said.

We are determined to complete this mission, with or without a ceasefire

Leaving open the option of widening a ground campaign in the Hamas Islamist-dominated Gaza Strip, the Israeli military said it had called up an additional 16,000 reservists. A military source said they would relieve a similar number of reserve soldiers being stood down.

Fighting, however, appeared less ferocious than on previous days this week – more than 100 were killed on Wednesday alone.

Gaza health officials said 19 Palestinians were killed in Israeli assaults yesterday, which in­cluded an air strike on a van in the heart of Gaza City, which killed two people.

The Israeli military said more than 60 rockets were fired from the Palestinian enclave, some deep into Israel. One person was moderately wounded by a Gaza projectile that struck in the southern town of Kiryat Gat.

Hamas said it fired one rocket at Tel Aviv, which the military said was intercepted. Netan­yahu’s security Cabinet on Wednesday approved continuing operations launched on July 8 in response to a surge of cross-border rocket attacks. Israel also sent a delegation to Egypt, which has been trying, with US blessing, to broker a ceasefire.

Washington has also allowed Israel to tap a local US arms stockpile in the past few weeks to replenish its grenades and mortar rounds, a US defence official said yesterday. US Secretary of State John Kerry, who failed in a visit to the region last week to secure a ceasefire, voiced support for Israel’s operations against the tunnels.

“No country can sit there and live with tunnels being dug under its border, out of which jump people who are carrying handcuffs and tranquilizer drugs in order to kidnap their citizens and hold them for ransom,” Kerry said in an interview broadcast yesterday by India’s NDTV.

Gaza officials say at least 1,410 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed in the battered territory and nearly 7,000 wounded. Fifty-six Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza clashes and more than 400 wounded. Three civilians have been killed by Palestinian shelling in Israel.

The Pentagon called on Israel yesterday to do more to protect civilian life during its military operations in Gaza.

“The civilian casualties in Gaza have been too high. And it’s become clear that the Israelis need to do more to live up to their very high standards – their very high and very public standards – for protecting civilian life,” Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said at a news briefing.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon strongly condemned on Wednesday the deaths of at least 15 Palestinians among thousands sheltering at a UN-run school.

The United Nations said its initial assessment was that Israeli artillery shells hit the facility.

Israel said its forces were attacked by guerrillas near the school in northern Jabalya and had fired back.

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