Israeli warplanes killed a senior Hamas leader and several members of his family yesterday in an airstrike that marked a possible new stage in the six-day offensive on the Islamists in the Gaza Strip.

With Hamas using increasingly sophisticated rockets to hit cities deeper inside Israel, F16 aircraft fired two missiles into the house of Nizar Rayyan, a fierce militant who had advocated renewing suicide bombings inside the Jewish state and the Islamists' takeover of the West Bank.

The blast decapitated Mr Rayyan and killed at least two of his four wives, as well as several of his children, and hurled his body into the street in Jabaliya, a refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip. Hamas responded by calling on Palestinians in the West Bank and east Jerusalem to mark a “day of wrath”, raising security fears as thousands head to weekly prayers at noon today.

Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, had warned that the persistent airstrikes on Gaza were merely the first stage of a military campaign that could take weeks to achieve its goals of destroying Hamas's rocket stockpiles and rendering the 15,000-strong organisation a spent force. The second phase was widely expected to be a series of assassinations of the Hamas leadership, most of whom are deep underground.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces continued to stream to the Gaza border in expectation of a full-scale ground invasion that many analysts believe could be huge but relatively brief, to avoid becoming bogged down in Gaza's teeming cities and slums.

While the military blasted more sites on the ground, including potential minefields on routes from the Israeli border, Tzipi Livni, the Foreign Minister, visited Paris as part of a diplomatic push to give her country greater freedom of manoeuvre. She reiterated Israel's rejection of a 48-hour “humanitarian ceasefire”, proposed by France to allow medical supplies and food into Gaza.

“There is no humanitarian crisis in the strip, and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce,” Ms Livni said. “Israel has been supplying comprehensive humanitarian aid to the strip ... and has even been stepping this up by the day.”

After the blow against its leadership, Hamas was quick to deny reports that it had secretly accepted a truce proposal from the EU, saying that a bogus statement had been published on its main website in an attempt to undermine its public stance.

Hamas also stepped up its own psychological warfare, sending messages in Hebrew to Israeli citizens' mobile phones warning: “Rockets on all cities, shelters will not protect you.”

The Islamists called on all Palestinians outside the besieged Gaza Strip to start marches from mosques across the West Bank and Jerusalem. “Let Friday be a day of solidarity with our people in Gaza and a day of wrath against the Zionist occupation and its settlers,” it said in a statement after the death of Mr Rayyan and his family.

Their deaths brought the Gazan toll to at least 414 in six days. Mr Rayyan, a professor of Islamic law, had refused to leave his house, despite pleas by Hamas leaders. One of his sons was a Hamas suicide bomber who killed two Israeli settlers in Gaza in 2001.

Rescue workers were digging through the rubble of his five-storey home to see if any other members of his large family had been killed. He had been an advocate of men having up to four wives and as many children as possible, insisting that the Palestinian struggle with Israel would be long and that future generations would need as many fighters as possible.

He had vowed that Hamas would go on to seize control of the West Bank from Fatah, as it had done with Gaza in a week of street battles in June 2007. He accused the Western-backed Fatah leadership of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, of collaborating with Israel, a charge that normally means execution in Hamas's rough justice.

In his last speech, broadcast on the eve of his death on Hamas's television station, Mr Rayyan said that he was looking forward to a showdown with Israel's ground forces should they invade Gaza. “We will succeed with God's will,” he said. “God promises us either victory or martyrdom.”

Assassination targets

July 22, 2002 Salah Shehade: Hamas military leader killed with 14 family members when an Israeli bomb was dropped on his home

August 21, 2003 Ismail Abu Shanab: one of Hamas's chief negotiators, killed in an Israeli missile attack on Gaza

March 22, 2004 Sheikh Ahmed Yassin: spiritual and political leader of Hamas killed in an Israeli missile attack

April 18, 2004 Abdel Aziz Rantisi: Yassin's successor killed by a missile strike while driving through Gaza City

October 22, 2004 Adnan al-Ghoul: a missile specialist, killed in an airstrike

Source: Times archive

Times Recommends

• Heed the great stabiliser’s words
• How a voice for everyone led to stalemate
• Bakara market becomes a slaughterhouse