Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - Israel urged 100,000 Gazans to flee their homes on Wednesday, but the warning was largely ignored as the military intensified its nine-day campaign after Hamas snubbed a ceasefire effort.

As the punishing Israeli operation resumed pace, Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas was to travel to Egypt and Turkey in search of regional support for an immediate end to the fighting after an attempt at an Egyptian-brokered truce collapsed.

So far, the Israeli campaign has killed 208 Palestinians, with a Gaza-based rights group saying over 80 percent of the victims were civilians. And militants have fired more than 1,200 rockets at Israel, which on Tuesday claimed their first Israeli life.

Overnight, warplanes struck about 40 sites across Gaza, among them political targets, as militants also kept up their fire on Israel's coastal plain, with four rockets shot down over metropolitan Tel Aviv.

The air force dropped flyers that warned some 100,000 Palestinians in the northeastern Gaza Strip to evacuate their homes by 0500 GMT, before it launched strikes that killed at least three people at Khan Yunis in the south.

The flyers threatened "aerial strikes against terror sites and operatives" in Zeitun and Shejaiya, two flashpoint districts east of Gaza City that were the source of "a high volume of rocket fire".

A similar message was sent to residents of Beit Lahiya in the north, echoing a warning sent by the army on Sunday, when more than 17,000 residents of the north fled for their lives, most seeking refuge in UN-run schools.

Flyers were seen falling in Zeitun, and residents elsewhere also reported receiving recorded phone and text messages urging them to evacuate and not return until further notice.

- Gazans defiant -

But the warnings did not have any effect immediate effect, with only a few people leaving their homes.

Children could be seen picking up the flyers and playing with them, some ripping them up and scattering the pieces.

"They dropped these bits of paper from planes telling people to leave. Where should we go?" asked Faisal Hassan, who lives in Zeitun.

"I will not leave my house, whatever happens. I have five children, we don't have food, we don't have wages. We're sitting here under God's mercy."

But Hamas urged residents to ignore the warnings.

"There is no need to worry about these (warnings), or deal with them. Do not respond to them in any way," it said. "This is part of the psychological war, intended to disrupt the domestic front."

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed the army would "expand and intensify" its operations after Hamas dismissed an Egyptian ceasefire proposal, firing scores of rockets over the border, despite the army holding its fire for six hours.

"This would have been better resolved diplomatically... but Hamas leaves us no choice but to expand and intensify the campaign against it," he said.

Although Israel would still prefer a truce to a ground operation, the security cabinet met overnight to discuss the possibility of a limited ground operation, army radio reported.

The cabinet approved plans to destroy the network of tunnels used by Hamas militants engaged in rocket fire, the radio said.

It also discussed the possibility of a limited ground incursion which would not initially involve entering towns of villages, as Israel continued its military build-up along the border.

- Rocket kills first Israeli -

The cabinet meeting came after a rocket on Monday claimed the first Israeli life, a civilian who had been delivering food to soldiers near the northern Erez crossing.

Since July 8, militants have fired more than 1,200 rockets and mortars at Israel, and Israel has bombed more than 1,750 targets inside Gaza, according to the army.

Palestinian president Abbas was due to arrive in Cairo on Wednesday evening where he was expected to meet top Egyptian officials over fresh efforts to seek a ceasefire, and was expected to head to Turkey a day later, officials said.

Hamas explained its rejection of Cairo's efforts at a truce by saying it had not been included in the discussions, and thereby was not obliged to observe it.

However, Mussa Abu Marzuq, a top member of the movement's exiled politburo said Hamas was still in discussions about a possible ceasefire.

In his remarks on Tuesday evening, Netanyahu hit back at domestic critics of his decision to accept Egypt's proposal, shortly afterwards he sacked the deputy defence minister over his criticism of the government's handling of the crisis.

Dismissed as a sham by Assad's opponents, the vote was held in June in areas of central and northern Syria that remain under state control. Large areas of Syria have fallen to an insurgency dominated by Islamists, including a powerful al Qaeda offshoot known as the Islamic State that has also seized swathes of Iraq.

Assad, supported by Russia and Iran, has defied calls by Western states for him to step aside during the conflict that started in 2011 with protests against his rule before descending into a war that has killed at least 170,000 people.

Assad is due to give a speech for the occasion that will set out his policy for the coming seven years, the Syrian presidency said in a statement on its official Facebook page.

"He's going to say: 'I am the state, I am Syria, and if the West wants access to Syrians, they have to come through me'," said Joshua Landis, an expert on Syria based at the University of Oklahoma in the United States.

His message is "that he is the only game in town, for stability, security, counter terrorism" and a solution to a refugee problem created by a conflict that has driven 3 million people out of the country, Landis said.

Assad has shored up his control over a strategic corridor of territory stretching north from Damascus, taking back major cities including Homs. Backed by Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, his forces are now squeezing rebels in Aleppo.

But to the east and northeast, large parts of the country are in insurgents' hands. The militant Islamic State has expanded its control in recent weeks, defeating other Islamist factions with new weaponry brought in from Iraq.

The United States, which has repeatedly said he has lost legitimacy, had described the election as meaningless.

Official returns showed Assad winning 88.7 percent of the vote. It was the first contested presidential election in Syria. Previous votes had been referendums to approve the appointment of Bashar and his father, Hafez al-Assad, who died in 2000.

Russia, which has supplied Assad with crucial diplomatic and military support, said the election had been fair, free and transparent and criticized governments that denounced it.

Syria descended into civil war after protests inspired by uprisings against autocrats across the Arab world drew a violent state response. Western-backed efforts to forge a political solution have failed to make any progress.

The United Nations has said that about 10.8 million people in Syria are now in need help, of which 4.7 million are in hard-to-reach areas.

Assad has since the outset depicted the battle as one against extremism - an assessment which diplomats and analysts say would in the Syrian leader's eyes have been bolstered by the Islamic State's recent gains in Iraq.

"You have had this massive distraction," a Western diplomat said, referring to the Islamic State's gains. "This has removed pressure."

(Additional reporting by Sylvia Westall and Laila Bassam; Writing by Tom Perry; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Airstrike in eastern Ukraine kills 11 civilians

An airstrike in eastern Ukraine sent an apartment building crumpling to the ground Tuesday, killing at least 11 people and adding to the steadily mounting civilian death toll from the fighting between government forces and pro-Russian insurgents.

Rebels pinned the attack on the Ukrainian air force. The government swiftly denied blame but was not immediately able to offer an alternative explanation.

The bombing in the rebel-held town of Snizhne demonstrated how airstrikes and heavy rocket fire are becoming increasingly common as the conflict drags into its fourth month. The attack comes one day after a Ukrainian military transport plane was shot down in disputed circumstances.

The devastation in Snizhne bore signs of a strike by several missiles and left only a mountain of smoking debris. The four-story apartment block appeared to have been hit in two separate spots, causing the collapse of several tiers. A nearby house was also destroyed.

Resident Igor Chernetsov lost his wife in the attack. "I heard an explosion, and suddenly I was thrown out of the apartment, out of the fourth floor," said Chernetsov, his head swathed in a bandage. "I woke up covered in dust and had no idea what had happened."

Health officials in the Donetsk region, which includes Snizhne, provided the number of dead. Rescue workers pulled a small child with broken legs alive from the rubble as grieving residents sifted for belongings. An Associated Press reporter counted six large impact craters.

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Igor Chernetsov, whose wife was killed in a building demolished by an airstrike, gestures near the c …

Dmitry Tymchuk, a military analyst who coordinates closely with Ukraine's Defense Ministry, said that since rebels are unlikely to have any planes capable of conducting the bombing, there could only be one explanation.

"Only Russian aviation could have performed the airstrike on Snizhne," he wrote on his Facebook account.

The Defense Ministry stopped short of that claim but insisted the bombing could not have been carried out by the air force as none of its planes were on sorties at the time of the strike.

Security Council spokesman Andrei Lysenko called the incident a "cynical and bloody provocation" aimed at discrediting the armed forces.

Sergei, a rebel commander at the scene who declined to give his surname, said locals bore witness to Ukrainian involvement.

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Rescue workers remove debris at a collapsed apartment after an airstrike in Snizhne, 100 kms east fr …

"Many local citizens saw the plane that dropped the bomb — it had Ukrainian markings," he said. "Why Ukraine would bomb its own territory is harder for me to say."

No reliable official recent death toll has been produced, but hundreds of civilians are believed to have been killed so far in the conflict. Authorities said Tuesday that 258 servicemen have been killed in fighting and 922 injured.

Representatives for the separatist Luhansk People's Republic said that 12 more civilians were killed Monday evening in the eastern city of Luhansk following rocket attacks and airstrikes. It was not immediately possible to verify those claims.

On Monday, Ukraine said one of its military transport planes carrying eight people was shot down by a missile fired from Russian territory. Security Service chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko said he had "unconditional evidence" that Russia was involved in downing the craft, Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported Tuesday. Rebels said they shot the plane down.

Defense Ministry representatives initially suggested all those on the plane had survived and been accounted for. The ministry updated its account to specify that while four on the plane were evacuated, another two were taken captive by rebels and that the whereabouts of two more are unknown.

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People carry out computers from collapsed building after an airstrike in Snizhne, 100 kms east from …

On Tuesday, the Moscow-based LifeNews online television channel broadcast the questioning by rebels of a man identified as a pilot from the downed Antonov-26.

LifeNews quoted a rebel militiaman Alexander Gureyev as saying the pilot was allowed to call his family.

"Most likely, we will exchange him for one of our militias in captivity. Nobody intended or intends to shoot him. Let his relatives not worry," Gureyev was quoted as saying.

In the last two weeks, the government has halved the territory in eastern Ukraine held by pro-Russia separatists, who have been forced back into the cities of Luhansk and Donetsk. Many in the armed insurgency are known to be Russian nationals, but Moscow says they are simply citizens who went to fight in Ukraine on their own.

Russia has denied it is helping to fuel the unrest in Ukraine and has in turn accused Kiev-commanded forces of shelling a border town inside Russia, killing one person. Ukraine denies firing shells onto foreign soil.

A delegation of international military attaches and reporters visited the site of the shelling Tuesday in Donetsk in what a senior Russian Defense Ministry official termed an "act of good will." Officials showed a residential building damaged by rocket fire and a series of craters next to a border crossing.

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Leonard reported from Kiev, Ukraine. Associated Press Writer Dmitry Kozlov in Donetsk, Russia, also contributed to this report.