GAZA CITY, Oct 3: 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," Mr Sharon told army radio in his first public comments on the operation.

He 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 on 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 on 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 on Wednesday after a rocket fired by the Islamic 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.

Mr 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," Erakat told AFP.