Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has requested the Israeli forces to cease the attacks in the northern part of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, which has killed at least 32 Palestinians, while more than 100 people have been wounded, the medical and police officials report.

The Israeli troops have initiated the incursions into the eastern areas of the northern Gaza Strip for the purpose of annihilating the militants who were firing rockets. They sent troops, tanks and aircraft to target rocket squads.

During the four-day Israeli incursion in Gaza the death toll has risen to 66 Palestinians. Doctors say that 200 have been wounded.

AFP reports that among those killed there are also civilians – a doctor and five children. At least 12 militants were killed in the fighting, of which 10 were from the Islamist Hamas Movement and the other two from Islamic Jihad.

In response to the Israeli strikes, Gaza militants launched at least 30 rockets at southern Israel, according to an army radio.

President Abbas, while addressing to the members of the Palestinian National Council, described the Israeli attacks “very dangerous.”

“I do not think what Israel is doing is in retaliation to the missiles, which we condemn. These missiles cannot be of the volume to justify this horrifying act, which required, regrettably, the use of a word despised for over 60 years and this word is 'holocaust'” Abbas told reporters in Ramallah.

Abbas, who is to meet US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice early next week, has made an appeal to the international community to take steps to halt the attacks that endanger the lives of children and women in Gaza Strip. 

He has also urged the militant groups to halt rocket launching against Israel. Speaking on Voice of Palestine Radio, Palestinian negotiator Yasser Abed Rabbo accused Hamas group of profiting from the sufferance of ordinary innocent Palestinians.

EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, will visit Israel and the Palestinian territories on Sunday, to support the peace talks between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders.