Stories of the conflict between Hamas and Israel as they happen

The death toll from five days of ferocious fighting between Hamas and Israel rose sharply overnight as Israel kept up its bombardment of Gaza Wednesday after recovering the dead from the last communities near the border where Palestinian militants had been holed up.

Gaza is a coastal strip of land that lay on ancient trading and maritime routes along the Mediterranean shore. Held by the Ottoman Empire until 1917, it passed from British to Egyptian to Israeli military rule over the last century and is now a fenced-in enclave inhabited by over 2 million Palestinians

Hamas is holding Israeli soldiers and civilians hostage and has threatened to execute a captive for each home in Gaza hit without warning, but despite Israel razing sections of Gaza and more airstrikes overnight there was no indication Hamas had carried out its threat.

Over 260,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in the Gaza Strip, as heavy Israeli bombardments from the air, land and sea continue to hit the Palestinian enclave.

Thousands have died and the toll was continuing to climb dramatically five days after Palestinian militants launched a surprise attack on Israel, which has responded with massive shelling of Gaza

Israel calls last week's devastating attack by Hamas its 9/11 moment. The secretive mastermind behind the assault, Palestinian militant Mohammed Deif, calls it Al Aqsa Flood

More than 1,200 Israelis have been killed in the Israel-Hamas conflict, an Israeli Defense Forces spokesperson said Wednesday, up from 1,000 previously reported

Over 260,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in the Gaza Strip, as heavy Israeli bombardments from the air, land and sea continue to hit the Palestinian enclave, the United Nations said

Israel said it recaptured Gaza border areas from Hamas fighters as the war’s death toll passed 3,000 yesterday, the fourth day of fierce fighting since the Islamist group launched a surprise attack.

Israel’s total siege of the Gaza Strip, depriving civilians of goods essential for survival, is banned under international law, the United Nations human rights chief said yesterday.

Hamas has threatened to execute one hostage every time Israel drops a bomb, without warning, on a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip, Reuters said yesterday, as the increasingly bloody war between the two sides rolls into a fourth day with no end in sight. The group has 150 hostages - including children and a Holocaust survivor - grabbed from border towns and kibbutzim in attacks that began early Saturday.

A salvo of rockets was fired on Tuesday from southern Lebanon towards Israel, three security sources told Reuters, in the third consecutive day of violence along the Lebanese-Israeli border