GAZA CITY (AFP) - Ten Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire in Gaza on Sunday as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon vowed to press on with a military offensive and the Palestinians appealed for urgent international action.
Sixty-nine people, all but three of them Palestinians, have been killed during the five-day incursion -- the deadliest in the impoverished Gaza Strip since the start of the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.
Three of the victims were Israelis, two of them soldiers.
"This is not a short operation. We should act for as long as the danger exists," Sharon told army radio in his first public comments on the operation.
Sharon said he had "given the order to change the situation on the Gaza front, to hit at the terrorists, their leadership and those who send them, along with those responsible for making weapons".
Six of the 10 victims killed Sunday were gunmen from militant groups fighting Israel, although one of the dead was a Palestinian deaf-mute man.
Another three were teenagers caught in the crossfire of two separate operations in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, who later died of their injuries.
Medics at Gaza City's al-Shifa hospital, named the latest victims as Mohammed al-Najjar and Sabah al-Taliyyeh, both 13, and 14-year-old Nidal al-Madhoun.
The fighting was triggered by the army's "Days of Penitence" operation launched late Tuesday which has been focused largely on the densely-populated Jabaliya refugee camp, home to just over 100,000 people.
Sunday's ongoing violence raised to 4,422 the number of people killed since the outbreak of the intifada, or uprising, against Israeli occupation in September 2000, including 3,398 Palestinians and 953 Israelis.
The death toll has swept past that of a May operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where more than 40 Palestinians were killed as Israel sought to destroy cross-border weapons-smuggling tunnels.
Despite the spiralling bloodshed, which escalated Wednesday after a rocket fired by the Islamic militant group Hamas killed two Israeli children in southern Israel, Sharon pledged the operation would continue.
"We must broaden the area of action to push back the rocket launchers so Jewish areas along the border are no longer within their range," the prime minister said.
Sharon adding that the aim was also to halt fire on Jewish settlements in Gaza, both in the immediate term and during implementation of his so-called disengagement plan.
Under terms of the plan, all Jewish settlers and troops are to be evacuated from the Gaza Strip by the end of 2005.
The Palestinian cabinet has declared a state of emergency, and on Sunday the parliament held an emergency session, with MPs mulling a proposal to give up one day's salary for victims of the raids.
Palestinian negotiations minister Saeb Erakat had harsh words for the international community's silence over the bloodshed.
"The absence of international reaction is encouraging Ariel Sharon to assert that the operation will continue, although the situation is getting worse," Erakat told AFP, warning it would lead to "a flareup in violence and extremism".
Egypt and France joined Spain, Switzerland, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Canada in expressing concern at the operation, while Israel's arch-foe Iran said the Jewish state was guilty of "genocide".
Arab League representatives decided that the 22-member bloc would make a joint appeal at the United Nations for urgent action to halt Israel's "continuing war of extermination against the Palestinian people."
But the United States has refrained from criticising Israel, saying only that it should use "proportional force" and avoid civilian casualties.
"Until now, there has not been any intense international pressure on Israel to stop this operation, as the Palestinians would wish," a senior Israeli official said.
In the southern West Bank, a 21-year-old Danish citizen and over 40 Palestinians were injured during clashes with the army as they protested against Israel's construction of a vast barrier across the territory, medics and peace activists said.
Maya Gouzare, a 21-year-old woman from Denmark who was volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a pro-Palestinian solidarity group, was moderately wounded after being hit in the back by a rubber bullet, they said.
Another 14 Palestinians were also injured by rubber bullets and around 30 others were treated for tear-gas inhalation, medics said.
In Gaza, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) denied Israeli claims that it allowed Palestinian militants to use one of its ambulances to transport Qassam rockets during the fierce fighting in Gaza.
A diplomatic storm blew up between Israel and UNRWA on Saturday after the army released grainy footage of what it said showed a militant putting a rocket into a UN ambulance.
But UNRWA chief Peter Hansen told Israeli public television the pictures showed paramedics throwing a folded portable stretcher into the vehicle and slammed the army for its "irresponsible" allegations based on "flimsy evidence".