Israel threatens to send Gaza back to Middle Ages

At least eight Palestinian journalists were injured when air raids hit buildings housing local media offices today in strikes that have already claimed nearly 60 lives.

While the first round of strikes destroyed a building housing Arab Al Quds television network, the second round of raids hit a building with offices of Sky News, al-Arabiya, and the official Hamas-run channel al-Aqsa TV.

One of the injured Palestinian journalists had to have a leg amputated.

Russian TV network Russia Today said its office in one of the buildings was also damaged.

Medics, meanwhile said three children were killed, one of them as young as 18 months old, when a refugee camp in central Gaza became the target of Israeli attacks.

Two of the children who died were from the same family. The attacks also wounded 12 people.

Later in the day, another strike killed three people, including two women in the narrow Gaza Strip, even as France's top diplomat Laurent Fabius arrived in the region to bolster Egyptian efforts to broker a ceasefire.

Even as media reports said efforts for a ceasefire were on, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that Israel was ready to "significantly expand" its operation in Gaza.

Israel's Interior Minister went a step ahead when he said "the goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages".

"Only then will Israel be calm for 40 years," Interior Minister Eli Yishai was quoted as saying by Haaretz newspaper.

Meanwhile, fighters in Gaza fired rockets into Israel though two of them, aimed at the commercial hub of Tel Aviv, were shot down by Israel's anti-missile system, reports said. (MORE)