BOMBS CONTINUE TO FALL AS PEACE TALKS PERSIST

FIGHTING raged across war-battered Gaza yesterday as the war's two-year anniversary loomed and peace negotiators desperately tried to reach a ceasefire deal.

- FROM CHRIS HUGHES

Israel's bombs piled into Gaza City, announced by deep booms and sending vast black and grey smoke clouds billowing over the enclave, heavy machine gun fire echoing through the ruins.

In this terrifying hellscape, civilians are desperately clinging onto hope of peace as Hamas and Israeli troops entered what the region hopes to be the final death spiral of war.

In a cruel twist of irony, we were witnessing from over a kilometre away one of the most violent days of the recent war as Israel tried to kill as many Hamas fighters as possible.

The Palestinian militant group and their Palestinian Islamic Jihad colleagues were trying to do the same - kill Israeli troops and exact violence in the final days of conflict.

If, that is, the conflict is to end any time soon.