"This is one of the results of the Bush visit. He encouraged the Israelis to kill our people," said Mahmoud al-Zahar, a Hamas leader, as he viewed in a Gaza hospital the body of his son, a militant killed in the latest fighting.
ARMOURED PUSH
Israel, which pulled troops and settlers out of the Gaza Strip in 2005, frequently mounts operations against militants in the territory in an effort to halt rocket attacks disrupting life in border communities.
Abbas used the term "massacre" in August to describe Israel's killing of 13 Palestinians in three days of fighting in Gaza that month.
Residents of Gaza City's Zeitun neighbourhood, a Hamas stronghold, said about 10 tanks and armoured vehicles had moved into the area.
At least 40 Palestinians were wounded, five of them critically, in the fighting, hospital workers said. Gaza's Shifa hospital issued an appeal for blood donations.
"We will pursue the path of liberation, complete liberation, even if all of us are killed," Zahar, who lost another son in 2004 when Israel tried to assassinate him, told reporters. "We will respond to them in the language they understand."
Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader who served as prime minister in the Hamas-led government dismissed by Abbas after Gaza's takeover, donated blood at Shifa hospital and described Israel's operation as "an ugly massacre".
The United States and Israel have moved to isolate Hamas over its refusal to recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept existing Israeli-Palestinian interim peace deals.
