Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak told parliament that the Jewish state was enagaged in "an all-out war against Hamas and its kind." The Islamist movement in charge of Gaza is continuing to defy the Israeli assaults, the fiercest on the coastal enclave since the 1967 Middle East war. Its forces fored rockets into the Israeli city of Ashkelon, killing an Arab labourer, the second such fatality since Israeli bombing began on Saturday.