JABALIYA, Oct 4: Eight Palestinians, including a child and a teenage girl, were killed by Israeli fire in the Gaza Strip on Monday as Israel's army warned its massive offensive could last for weeks.

Since Israel unleashed its military might six days ago, 73 Palestinians have been killed in the deadliest incursion into the Gaza Strip since the start of the intifada four years ago.

Israeli chief of staff General Moshe Yaalon warned that the onslaught, aimed at establishing a buffer zone to prevent militants from firing home made and generally inaccurate rockets at Israel, could last for weeks.

"Our forces are ready to operate not just for days but for weeks," Yaalon told army radio. "In the war on terror, one does not resolve the problem in a single operation but by a series of operations and we will continue for as long as it takes."

Four militants from the Hamas movement were killed in an air strike on the densely populated Jabaliya refugee camp, just before dawn. The army said the men were seen preparing to lay an explosive charge in the path of an Israeli patrol.

Two more men and a 16-year-old girl were killed during gunfire in the camp, Palestinian medics said. Violence also flared in the southern Gaza Strip where a four-year-old boy was shot dead by Israeli troops during an incursion in a village near Khan Yunis.

Unmanned planes and helicopters were flying over Jabaliya camp on Monday, firing missiles and strafing any fighters who dared to venture out, AFP correspondents witnessed.

Plumes of suffocating black smoke billowed from tires set ablaze by militants while residents gathered in the homes of the bereaved or in the large mourning tents traditionally erected for the families of the "martyrs".

The International Committee of the Red Cross was distributing food and water in the hardest hit neighbourhoods, where power and water supplies had been cut off by the heavy fighting.

Palestinian foreign minister Nabil Shaath hit out at the Israeli incursion, calling it "state terrorism" which contravened the internationally established rules of war.

"A crime is being perpetrated against civilians by the Israeli occupation forces, according to the Fourth Geneva Convention," he said while visiting the wounded in Jabaliya's Kamal Udwan hospital.

The operation had caused a "humanitarian disaster", he said, calling for an emergency meeting of the convention's signatories to demand that Israel respect its provisions on the treatment of civilians under occupation or in time of war.

The Palestinian cabinet has declared a state of emergency in the face of the onslaught while the UN Security Council was set to debate the continuing Gaza operation at an emergency session in New York later on Monday. Several foreign governments, as well as the Red Cross, have expressed concern at the operation, while Israel's arch foe Iran accused it of "genocide". -AFP