GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- Israeli airstrikes killed a schoolboy and two other Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, while Gaza rocket squads fired salvos into southern Israel, deepening the worst round of violence between the sides in more than a year.
The Israeli military said its aircraft targeted rocket launchers and a Gaza health official said the 12-year-old boy, a 60-year-old farm guard and a militant were killed as the exchanges of fire entered their third day. Egyptian efforts to achieve a cease-fire faltered, spurned by the two factions in the territory responsible for the rocket fire.
The violence has shattered a monthslong lull and was touched off on Friday by an Israeli air assault that killed the commander of the Popular Resistance Committees militant group, an ally of Gaza's Hamas rulers. Since then, Israeli airstrikes have killed 16 Gazan militants and two civilians, and fighters in the territory have fired more than 120 rockets at Israel, seriously wounding two civilians.
Gaza health official Adham Abu Salmia said the militant killed Sunday was at a rocket launching site in Gaza City. The boy was hit while walking with a friend to school in the northern city of Jebaliya and the guard died in Gaza City while walking with his dog, who was also killed, he added.
Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the dozen rockets launched from Gaza on Sunday caused no injuries or damage. The Israeli military claims more casualties were averted since the fighting began because Iron Dome missile defense batteries intercepted more than 90 percent of the rockets they targeted.
Israel accused the PRC commander, Zuhair al-Qaissi, of plotting an infiltration attack into southern Israel from Egypt's lawless Sinai peninsula, similar to the one they claim he orchestrated in August, which killed eight Israelis.
The PRC, best known for its role in the 2006 capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit recently freed in a prisoner swap, has never taken responsibility for the August raid.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel remains prepared for a strike on its southern flank and pledged to deploy more Iron Dome missile defense batteries in the future.
"We exacted a heavy price and continue to exact it," Netanyahu said of the Israeli strikes on Gaza. "We will continue to overcome these terror threats."
Some 1 million Israelis are within range of rocket fire from Gaza, and on Sunday, schools throughout the area and Ben-Gurion University in Beer Sheva were closed because of the fighting. Rosenfeld said police stepped up their presence in southern Israel.
Israel and Gaza militants have frequently traded low-level fire since the 2009 war, but a flare-up of this intensity is rare. The United Nations and the U.S. State Department have condemned the violence and called on both sides to exercise restraint.
Gaza's militant Islamic Hamas rulers have denounced the Israeli airstrikes but their fighters have not attacked Israel, leaving that to other, smaller militant groups.
Hamas has largely avoided direct attacks on Israel since the Jewish state conducted a bruising three-week war against the militant group in early 2009 that killed hundreds of Gazans and destroyed many Hamas facilities.
But the Iranian-backed Hamas has been smuggling increasingly sophisticated weapons into the seaside territory and Israel holds it responsible for all violence emanating from Gaza.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Israel Radio on Sunday that there was no point in Israel's launching another large-scale offensive in Gaza unless it sets out to topple the Hamas regime. Lieberman wouldn't say whether such an operation was planned but noted that the violence from Gaza was "unacceptable and we won't reconcile ourselves to it."
Despite Lieberman's tough talk, neither side is believed to be interested in all-out war.
"We are not interested in escalations in and of themselves," Israel's military chief, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, said on Sunday.
Egypt, which has helped arrange truces in the past, has been trying to end the current round of fighting.
"Our contacts are still ongoing and we hope that all parties will respond to avoid going down a path no one wants," said Egypt's ambassador to the Palestinians, Yasser Othman.
But the two militant factions leading the fighting, al-Qaissi's PRC and Islamic Jihad, said they rejected truce overtures.
"There is no room to talk about calm considering the continued Zionist aggression against Gaza," Khaled Batch, a leader of the Islamic Jihad militant faction in Gaza, told The Associated Press.
"We have received an offer to restore the calm and we rejected the offer," Abu Mujahed, spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, told the AP. "We will not give calm for free."
Hamas officials, for their part, said they have been in touch with leaders in Qatar, Turkey and the Arab League in an effort to contain the violence. Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian spokeswoman, accused Israel of deliberately provoking the violence and said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had also been touch with leaders in Gaza and Egypt to try to restore calm.
Abbas has had little on-the-ground influence in Gaza since Hamas violently overran the territory in June 2007.
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