Sights and sounds of Israel's Gaza offensive

GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli air strikes rocked the Gaza Strip for a sixth straight day, one of them killing a senior Hamas leader in his home, and Palestinian militants fired rockets deep into southern Israel.

Here are some sights and sounds of the conflict.

Hundreds of Palestinians screaming for revenge gathered around rescue workers who pulled the badly mangled bodies of a Hamas leader and his family from the rubble of their house destroyed in an Israeli air strike.

The missile strike killed Nizar Rayyan, a 49-year-old cleric regarded as one of Hamas's most hardline political leaders. Two of his four wives and seven of his children died with him.

Soon after, Israeli television broadcasted archive footage of Rayyan, a preacher known to have mentored suicide bombers, dressed in military fatigues and carrying a Kalashnikov rifle and an RPG launcher, joining Hamas fighters on patrols.

-----------

"We didn't declare war on the residents of Gaza, but against Hamas we will act with an iron fist," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on a visit to Beersheba, the city Israel regards as the capital of its southern Negev region.

A rocket from Gaza hit a schoolroom in the city on Wednesday, the first Hamas attack at such range. Local officials had ordered the school closed and the classroom was empty.

------------