A Palestinian family flees their home in Jabaliya, in the northern Gaza Strip, after an Israeli ground incursion and air attacks there left scores of Palestinians dead. (Wissam Nassar, Maan Images)

Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, rejected international calls yesterday to end the "excessive" and "disproportionate" military operation in Gaza which has claimed the lives of 101 Palestinians – including many children and other civilians – since Wednesday.

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, called on Israel to halt the air and ground attacks which on Saturday alone claimed the lives of at least 54 Palestinians in the most lethal single day of violence since the beginning of the second intifada more than seven years ago. The Slovenian EU presidency – while condemning the rocket attacks from Gaza which Israel says it is trying to stop – condemned the "recent disproportionate use of force by the Israel Defence Forces against the Palestinian population of Gaza, noted the death of "innocent children" and said that such acts of "collective punishment" were against international law.

But as the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, announced that he was breaking off US-brokered negotiations with Israel as long as its "aggression" continued, Mr Olmert told the weekly meeting of the Israeli Cabinet: "Israel has no intention of stopping the fight against the terrorist organisations even for a minute." He declared: "With all due respect ... no one has the right to preach morality to Israel for employing its elementary right of self-defence."

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister of Turkey, Israel's most important ally in the Muslim world, also decried the "disproportionate force" used in attacks which were killing "children and civilians" and complained that Israel was rejecting a "diplomatic" solution to the conflict.

In Washington, the White House spokesman, Gordon Jondroe, said the violence, which also claimed the lives of two Israeli soldiers on Saturday and a 47-year-old Israeli mature student in a rocket attack on Wednesday, "needs to stop and the talks need to resume". The Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, said he was "deeply concerned" by the Palestinian decision to halt negotiations.

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In Gaza, medical officials said a 21-month-old Palestinian girl, two other civilians and three militants were killed yesterday. The Israeli military said four soldiers had been hurt and two Israeli civilians were slightly injured after 21 rockets were launched by militants, including three longer range Katyushas, one of which directly hit a house in Ashkelon.

Among those buried yesterday were six members of one family including its head, Abd el-Rahman Mohammad Ali Atallah, and his 60-year-old wife, Suad, two sons and two daughters, who were killed late on Saturday afternoon when their house was destroyed by three aerial bombs which residents near by said also injured four children including a two-day-old infant. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, which documents all Palestinian deaths, and is opposed to all attacks on non-combatants including in Israel, said 49 of the dead since Wednesday were civilians.

As thousands of Gazans streamed on foot through streets abnormally empty of cars because of severe fuel shortages to and from near-continuous funerals in Beit Lahiya and Gaza City's Sheikh Radwan cemetery, Fatima Abed Rabbo, 23, told how she was shot in the left shoulder as she stood by her one-year-old daughter, Doha, at her home in Jabalya during the bloody first hour of the Israeli incursion shortly after midnight on Saturday.

Lying on her bed at the Kamal Odwan hospital, where the first 40 dead victims of the assault were brought on Saturday morning, Mrs Abed Rabbo said the shot had come through the door of her balcony at about the same time as her friends and neighbours Jaqueline and Eyad Abu Shbak, a teenage brother and his sister, were killed in their home.

She said Jaqueline, 16, who she said had been hit by shrapnel after an Israeli missile hit a parked car outside the home, was an especially good student in the science department of her high school. Eyad, 14, who was struck by a bullet, had just started high school.

"They were excellent people," she said. "Our family and theirs were always in and out of each other's houses. Two ambulances came at the same time to take us away. They were dead and I was alive."

To read the full article, and selections from Gaza-based blogs, please visit The Independent.