AS THE US President, George Bush, wrapped up his first extended Middle East tour, the Holy Land returned to the grim status quo, with violence flaring in Gaza and the West Bank.

Only the scale of the killing is in any way remarkable - at least 19 Palestinians in Gaza, including five civilians, and an Ecuadorean labourer working on an Israeli kibbutz. It is the highest daily death toll in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in over a year. In the West Bank a senior leader of the Islamic Jihad group was killed by Israeli troops early yesterday.

The killing began early on Tuesday morning when Israeli soldiers, who had secretly infiltrated parts of eastern Gaza City overnight, fired on Hamas fighters in the streets. Backed by tanks and air strikes, the Israeli troops maintained their assault until late afternoon.

By nightfall five Palestinian civilians and 14 fighters were dead, including the 24-year-old son of a hardline Hamas leader, Mahmoud Zahar.

No Israeli military casualties were reported, but a 20-year-old Ecuadorean, described in the Israeli press as a kibbutz volunteer, was killed mid-morning when Palestinians fired on a crew of labourers sent to work in a potato field near the Gaza border fence.

Later that evening five Israeli civilians were wounded and five more treated for shock after Hamas fired a volley of rockets and mortars into Israel.

One of the rockets struck the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon - the second in a week to hit a population centre thought to have been beyond the range of most Palestinian missiles. No one was injured.

The Gaza City attack and West Bank raid are the latest in a series of operations that the Israeli Defence Force says are designed to "uproot the infrastructure of terror" and prevent militants in the blockaded Gaza Strip from firing missiles at nearby Israeli towns.

Dr Mustafa Barghouti, an independent Palestinian parliamentarian, said at least 121 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli action in the eight weeks since Mr Bush launched his new peace drive at Annapolis.

But the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, announced at the start of the Annapolis process that Israeli forces would operate as if there were no peace talks while talks with the leadership of the Palestinian Authority continued as if there were no violence.