Here is a summary of today?s key events so far.
Israel
? Israeli airstrikes continued in Gaza today following the attack yesterday that killed Hamas?s military chief Ahmed al-Jabari. The attack came after a series of rocket attacks from Gaza into southern Israel over recent days. The Israeli army said 156 targets were hit in Gaza, 126 of them rocket launchers. Thirteen people were killed in Gaza yesterday including a pregnant woman with twins, an 11-month old boy and two infants, with 130 wounded, according to Gaza?s health ministry. A truce was not on the agenda, Israeli military spokeswoman Avital Leibovitz said. Hamas?s leader, Khaled Meshaal, vowed to ?continue the resistance?. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, who rules the West Bank but not Gaza, cut short a European trip to return to the West Bank in response to the crisis.
? Three Israelis were killed by a rocket attack from Gaza, the first Israeli fatalities in the present conflict. The deaths came when a four-storey building was hit in the town of Kiryat Malachi, 15 miles (25km) north of Gaza; a four-year-old boy and two babies were also wounded. Israel said 200 rockets had struck Israel since yesterday, 135 since midnight. Eighteen rockets had been shot down today by Israel?s ?iron dome? counter-missile missile system, Israel said. Hamas claimed it had fired a one-tonne rocket at Tel Aviv, but there were no reports of an impact in the city.
? Hamas declared a state of emergency in Gaza and Israel did the same in the country?s south. There were reports Hamas was barring foreigners from leaving.
??Egypt?s president, Mohamed Morsi, called Israel?s attacks on Gaza "unacceptable? and said he stood by the Gazan people. The Muslim Brotherhood, with which Morsi is aligned, called for Egypt to sever diplomatic ties with Israel. Egypt has officially requested a meeting of the UN security council to discuss what it described as Israeli aggression on Gaza, the foreign ministry said. After 33 years of peace, the relationship between Israel and Egypt has cooled since the ousting of dictator Hosni Mubarak and this is the first test of relations between Israel and a semi-democratic Egypt. Qatar, Jordan, Iran and Syria also condemned the Israeli operation.
? William Hague placed the blame for the situation on Hamas. Yesterday the Obama administration backed the Israeli airstrikes, a state department spokesman denouncing rocket attacks from Gaza and supporting Israel?s right to self-defence.
? Thousands of mostly young men attended Jabari?s funeral amid gunfire and chaotic scenes.
? An Israeli peace activist, Gershon Baskin, claimed that Jabari had received a draft truce agreement between Israel and Hamas that Baskin had also shown to Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak. He attempted to characterise Jabari as a moderate who had come round to the cause of peace.
Syria
? Turkey sent fighter jets to its south-eastern border with Syria for a second day, following days of Syrian bombing of a town on the Syrian side of the border. There was no sign of fighting there today. Videos purported to show rebel Free Syrian Army soldiers taking control of an army post in the town, Ras al-Ain. These could not be independently verified.
? Activists posted videos purporting to show shelling in the suburbs of the capital today, resulting in at least one death. These videos could not be independently verified.
??France's foreign minister announced that Paris is to discuss supplying arms to Syrian opposition forces with other European capitals in the coming weeks, following the formation of the new opposition coalition on Sunday. Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said today that any foreign help to the opposition fighting Bashar Assad's government would represent a "gross violation" of basic principles of international law.
Jordan
? Ongoing riots in Jordan following the government?s decision to increase fuel prices left one person dead today. The death is the first in violence that has spread to several poor towns in the kingdom since Tuesday night.
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