GAZA CITY, Feb 28: Israel pounded Hamas-run Gaza on Thursday, killing 10 militants, four children and another civilian, as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed to make the Islamists pay a heavy price for rocket attacks.

The four children, aged eight, nine, 11 and 12, were killed as they played in a field during an Israeli air strike around the northern town of Jabaliya, Palestinian medics said.

Another 12-year-old boy died of wounds sustained in a Gaza raid the previous day, and a shepherd was killed in northern Gaza.

The Israeli army said it carried out several air strikes targeting rocket-launching sites.

Twenty-nine Palestinians and one Israeli have been killed in two days of bloodshed, all but three of them in and around the impoverished Gaza Strip, where Israel has imposed a punishing blockade.

Among those killed have been a six-month-old baby in Gaza and a man in southern Israel who became the first Israeli victim of a Gaza rocket attack in nine months.

A Hamas gunman was also killed in an Israeli strike near the house of Ismail Haniya, the premier in the Hamas-led government that Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas fired after the Islamists seized control of Gaza in June.

Following talks with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Tokyo, Olmert vowed to punish Hamas for the rocket attacks despite US concerns about civilians in Gaza.

“We will make the terrorists pay a very heavy price,’ Olmert told reporters. “We are at the height of this battle and we will pursue it until the danger threatening residents in the south ends.” Defence Minister Ehud Barak warned that “a large-scale ground operation is being considered” and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni urged the international community to accept such an operation.

“We don’t accept arguments that there are victims in both camps, as one cannot put Palestinian terrorism that targets innocent civilians on the same footing as those who combat it, even if civilians are killed unintentionally,” Livni said.

Rice said earlier she told Olmert that she supported his determination to end the Palestinian rocket attacks.—AFP