Israel - Gaza War Day 3: Funerals.

For a third day Israel has continued it's bombardment of Gaza but it has been a comparatively quiet day providing the Gazan residents the opportunity to bury their 300 or so dead. The grimmest of these ceremony's was the funeral of five sisters who were killed when their home was crushed as the Mosque next door collapsed following an Israeli missile strike.

Diplomatically Israel has finally admitted that rather then being a spontaneous response to clear clear and present threat to their safety the current offensive is intended to be a full scale war and has been planned from as far back as June 2008 when Israel was trying to convince the world that it was taking peace negations with the Palestinians seriously and just after Hamas agreed their six month ceasefire. Israel has yet to explain why in those five months of planning they didn't see fit to notify UN Security Council or seek a resolution justifying the attacks. The UN Secretary General has condemned Israel's excessive use of force and called on both sides to call an immediate ceasefire.

Meanwhile a UN aid agency on the ground in Gaza has called for an investigation to discover why one of their compounds which teaches local people how to distribute humanitarian aid was one of the "Hamas security compounds" that the Israeli air force saw fit to attack on the first day of the conflict killing seven. They are keen to examine the circumstances that led up to the attack because it may well constitute a war crime.

Hamas and other Gazan militant groups have continued to fire home made Qassam and longer range military grade rockets into Israel killing three more today. This means that so far Israel's operation to protect it's citizens from rocket fire has succeeded in quadrupling the number of Israeli's killed by rocket fire in just four days. It was also announced that two Israelis were stabbed and killed in a shopping centre in Northern Israel but this has not been confirmed and as it was reported as I was heading off to a shopping centre I suspect I might be in a copyright dispute with the UK security services.