Israel killed a senior Palestinian militant commander in heavy air strikes on Gaza on Monday and Islamist groups renewed rocket attacks on Israeli cities despite mounting international calls for a ceasefire.

As the fiercest hostilities in the region in years entered a second week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged all sides to protect civilians. Washington, Egypt and U.N. mediators stepped up efforts to end the fighting.

Gaza health officials put the Palestinian death toll since the hostilities flared last week at 201, including 58 children and 34 women. Ten people have been killed in Israel, including two children.

Police said an Israeli man also died in hospital on Monday after being attacked last week by Arab rioters as clashes broke out in mixed Jewish-Arab communities in Israel, a new front of violence that has been ignited by the Gaza fighting.

The killing of Hussam Abu Harbeed, Islamic Jihad's armed commander for north Gaza, was likely to draw a fierce response from the militant group that is fighting alongside Hamas, the Islamist movement that governs the coastal enclave.

The Israeli military said in a statement that Harbeed had been "behind several anti-tank missile terror attacks against Israeli civilians", and an Israeli general said his country could carry on the fight "forever".

Militant groups in Gaza also gave no sign that an end to fighting was imminent. Soon after Harbeed's death, Islamic Jihad fired rockets at the Israeli coastal city of Ashdod, and medics said seven people had been injured.

At least seven Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza on Monday by early evening, including two that died in a missile attack on a seven-storey office building in Gaza City, medics said. The intensity of Israeli strikes has tended to increase after dark.

(Source: Reuters)