Israel is going to allow 443 foreigners residing in the Gaza Strip to leave the territory of the enclave, the VOA announced citing an Israeli military official.

Most of the foreign citizens in Gaza are with US, Russian, Moldavian, Ukrainian, Turkish, and Norwegian passports.

The announcement about the foreigners' evacuation has fueled fears that Israel is preparing to launch a ground military operation in the Gaza Strip.

About 400 Palestinians have been killed, and nearly 2 000 have been wounded in the seven days of Israeli air strikes against Hamas targets so far. No one has been reported killed in the fresh aerial bombardment that the Israeli forces carried out Friday morning.

On Thursday, an Israeli strike killed the Palestinian cleric Nizar Rayyan, the first senior Hamas leader to die in the offensive, as well as his four wives, and eleven of his twelve children.

Despite that the Israeli Army has denied that it had restarted its policy of targeted killings of Hamas leaders. An Army spokeswoman said Rayyan's house had been used as a storage site for rockets and explosives, and that its residents had been warned it would be hit.

After a brief pause, Hamas resumed firing rockets and shells from Gaza into southern Israel Friday morning, DPA reported. Hamas has declared Friday, January 2, a "Day of Rage" against the Israeli onslaught on the Gaza Strip, calling on Palestinians throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem to protest after the weekly Muslim prayers.

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