An Israeli woman is treated for shock after a rocket by Palestinian militants hit the town of Sderot, southern Israel, yesterday. Thirty-five Gazans, many of them civilians, died in clashes between Israeli troops and militants yesterday. The escalating violence has prompted Palestinian leaders to threaten to suspend peace talks with Israel, while Gaza militants bombarded southern Israel with a barrage of salvos. - AP

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP):

Forty-seven Gazans, including as many as two dozen civilians, were killed as clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants escalated yesterday into the deadliest day of violence in Gaza, since Islamic Hamas militants seized control there in June. Two Israeli soldiers also died.

West Bank leaders threatened to suspend peace talks to protest the Israeli attacks, which came as Gaza militants bombarded southern Israel with more than 50 rockets and mortars.

At least two children, including a baby, were among those killed, and militants said 19 fighters died. Gaza Health Ministry official Dr Moaiya Hassanain said 160 people were wounded, 14 of them, including a baby, critically.

Palestinian fighters kept up a steady stream of rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli targets, undeterred by Israeli shelling from tanks and airstrikes. Six Israelis were wounded, all but one of them slightly, in rocket fire that reached as far north as Ashkelon, 17 kilometers (11 miles) from Gaza.

The swelling violence came amid Israeli threats to launch a broad invasion of Gaza, and just days before US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was due to arrive in the region on her latest peacekeeping mission.

Hamas blamed Israel

The bloodletting began before midnight on Friday in the northern town of Beit Hanoun, where a 13-month-old girl, Malak Karfaneh, was killed by shrapnel. Hamas blamed Israel, but residents said a militant rocket fell short and landed in the area of the baby's house.

Before dawn Saturday, the battleground shifted to Jebaliya, a centre of militant activity in northern Gaza. Soldiers backed by tanks and aircraft conducted house-to-house searches and took up positions on rooftops as they clashed with militants detonating land mines and firing heavy machine guns, assault rifles and mortar rounds.

By evening, more than 40 Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers were dead.

Israeli aircraft also traveled further south to demolish a house belonging to a Hamas militant in Gaza City. The house was empty, but a woman and her two sons in a nearby building were killed, and a two-month-old grandson was critically wounded. Israel said the building was used to produce and store weapons.

In Jebaliya, a wounded man and boy lay in a gutter near a lifeless man. Ambulance workers took away the dead man as a youth appealed to paramedics to treat the wounded. "Take them, they are still alive,'' he pleaded. Another man urged the wounded to proclaim their Muslim faith before they died. The two began reciting a Muslim prayer. The boy's lower body was ripped by shrapnel.

In all, more than 70 Palestinians, including around 40 civilians, have been killed since fighting flared last Wednesday.

Palestinian rocket fire earlier in the week also killed an Israeli man. The rocket assaults grew more ominous when a projectile struck closer to Israel's heartland. On Friday, Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai renewed a threat to invade Gaza to crush militant rocket squads that attack southern Israel daily.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qureia said Palestinian leaders, including President Mahmoud Abbas, recommended calling off peace talks at a meeting Saturday in the West Bank town of Ramallah.

''I think they will be suspended,'' Qureia said.

''What is happening in Gaza is a massacre of civilians, women and children, a collective killing, genocide,'' Qureia added. ''We can't bear what the Israelis are doing, and what the Israelis are doing doesn't lend the peace process any credibility.''

Israeli officials also met yesterday to discuss the Gaza violence. Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel said as far as Israeli was concerned, talks are ''based on the understanding that when advancing the peace process with pragmatic (Palestinian) sources, Israel will continue to fight terror that hurts its people.''

Talks resumed in November after a seven-year breakdown at a U.S.-sponsored conference. At the gathering, the two sides pledged to try to reach an accord by the end of this year. In recent weeks, negotiators have met almost daily.

But the rising tide of violence threatened to cripple peace efforts.

Abbas condemned the ballooning civilian death toll.

''The response to these rockets can't be that harsh and heinous,'' he said. ''It is nowadays described as a holocaust.''

But Israeli government spokesman David Baker said Israel was ''compelled to continue to take these defensive measures'' to protect more than 200,000 Israelis living under the threat of Palestinian rocket barrages.

Militants ''hide behind their own civilians, using them as human shields, while actively targeting Israeli population centers,'' Baker said. ''They bear the responsibility for the results.''