Hamas rejects Abbas truce offer

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas offered to help negotiate a ceasefire as Israel pounded Gaza on Thursday, killing seven people days after a suicide bombing claimed by the Strip's Hamas rulers.
Hamas promptly rejected the offer, with spokesman Fawzi Barhum branding it a "blackmail attempt against the Palestinian people whom (Abbas) has left to be massacred."
Escalating violence has now seen 20 Palestinians, mostly militants, killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza and several Israelis, including two young children, wounded by militant rocket attacks during the past week.
Abbas offered to help broker a ceasefire, his spokesman said, amid fears that the violence could undermine recently revived peace talks.
"President Abbas is prepared to try to work towards a mutual ceasefire with Israel to stop the daily slaughter confronting the Palestinian people in Gaza," Nabil Abu Rudeina told AFP.
Abbas has repeatedly condemned both Palestinian rocket fire and Israeli strikes on Gaza, but he has little if any authority over the territory from which his security forces were ousted by Hamas in June 2007.
Israeli government spokesman Avi Pazner said the government had not yet received the offer, but said it was up to Hamas to end the fighting.
"The most simple thing is for Hamas to end its attacks against Israel and then we will not have to take measures to respond to them," he told AFP.
In one air strike on Thursday four militants -- three from the armed wing of Hamas and another from Islamic Jihad -- were killed near Jabaliya in northern Gaza by a missile fired from a drone.
A second air raid killed two militants near Tuffah, also north of Gaza City, and wounded four more, two of them seriously, medics said.
A teacher was also killed when a tank shell hit a high school in the northern town of Beit Hanun, medics said.