A Palestinian woman runs with her children following what police said was an Israeli air strike on a house in Gaza city yesterday. Photo: Reuters

Israeli air strikes shook Gaza every few minutes yesterday, and militants kept up rocket fire at Israel’s heartland in intensifying warfare that Palestinian officials said has killed at least 38 people in the Hamas-dominated enclave.

Missiles from the Iron Dome defence system shot into the sky to intercept rockets launched, for the second straight day, at Tel Aviv, the country’s commercial capital.

With cries of ‘Allahu akbar’ (God is great), Palestinians in Gaza cheered as rockets streaked overhead toward Israel, in attacks that could provide a popularity boost for Islamist Hamas, whose rift with neighbouring Egypt’s military-backed government has deepened economic hardship.

Other communities near Tel Aviv in central Israel and in the south, closer to Gaza, were also targeted. In the longest-range attack since Tuesday, when Israel stepped up its offensive, a rocket hit near Zichron Yaakov, a town 115 kilometres north of Gaza.

No Israeli fatalities or serious injuries were reported and Israeli news reports hailed as heroes the military crews of the Iron Dome batteries, which are made in Israel and partly funded by the US.

The military said 48 rockets struck Israel on Wednesday, and Iron Dome intercepted 14 others.

With frequent explosions from air strikes echoing through Gaza City, its main shopping street was largely deserted.

Local residents reported hundreds of attacks yesterday.

The Israeli military said it had bombarded 550 Hamas sites, including 60 rocket launchers and 11 homes of senior Hamas members. It described those dwellings as command centres.

Palestinian officials said at least 25 houses were either destroyed or damaged and not all belonged to militants.

Israeli military says it has bombarded 550 Hamas sites

The build-up to the most serious hostilities between Israel and Gaza militants since an eight-day war in 2012 began three weeks ago with rocket attacks following the abduction and killing of three Jewish seminary students in the occupied West Bank.

At least 30 civilians, including six children, were among the 38 Palestinian dead in two days of fighting, and 230 people have been wounded, hospital officials said.

Cairo brokered a truce in the conflict two years ago, but the current government’s hostility toward Hamas, which it accuses of aiding militants in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, could make a mediation role more difficult. Hamas denies the allegations. Palestinian rocket barrages have sent Israelis racing for bomb shelters, with radio stations interrupting regular broadcasts to announce where sirens have sounded. But the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange seemed untroubled, ending the day with shares slightly higher. Israeli leaders, who seem to have wide popular support at home for the Gaza operation, have warned of a lengthy campaign and possible ground invasion of the heavily populated Palestinian territory.