China on Monday called for "maximum restraint" by all parties, especially Israel, in the Gaza Strip conflict as the death toll from air strikes on the territory rose to 87.

The statement came as Israel pushed raids against Palestinian Hamas militants into a sixth day and geared up to expand operations with a ground offensive even as international efforts to broker a ceasefire gathered pace.

The main Islamist rebel groups in Aleppo province, including Al-Nusra Front, have rejected the newly-formed Syrian opposition bloc saying they want an Islamic state, in an Internet video posted on Monday.

"We, the fighting squads of Aleppo city and province, unanimously reject the conspiratorial project called the National Coalition and announce our consensus to establish an Islamic state" in Syria, a spokesman announced in the video.

U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon arrived in Yemen on Monday to mark the first anniversary of a transition deal that resulted in strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh handing over power, media and diplomats said.

On his first visit to the impoverished Arabian Peninsula country, the U.N. Secretary General will hold talks with President Abdrabuh Mansour Hadi and Gulf Cooperation Council head Abdul Latif al-Zayani who is also in Sanaa, according to official news agency SABA.

Israeli air strikes killed 35 Palestinians on Monday, hiking the Gaza death toll to 103 as global efforts to broker a truce to end the worst violence in four years gathered pace.

In the latest bloodshed, an Israeli missile killed a senior Islamic Jihad militant in a strike on a Gaza City tower housing Palestinian and international media, the Israeli army and militants said.

Leading Republican Senator John McCain suggested Sunday that President Barack Obama should send Bill Clinton as a special envoy to try to negotiate peace between Israel and Hamas.

"The United States should obviously be as heavily influential as they can," McCain told CBS television, referring to the bloody conflict that has raged since Wednesday between Israel and the Gaza Strip's Islamist rulers.

Senior U.S. Senator Carl Levin criticized Egypt's "weak" efforts Sunday to pressure its ally Hamas to reduce tensions in the bloody conflict between Gaza's Islamist rulers and their enemy Israel.

"It's pretty weak so far from what I can tell. The Egyptians have a real interest here in the region not exploding and the peace agreement continuing to be abided by," said Levin, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Sunday a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza militants was an urgent necessity and France was willing to help broker a truce.

"War is not an option, it is never an option," he told journalists in Tel Aviv. "There are two key words: urgency and ceasefire," he said.

Syria's regime on Sunday slammed as "hostile" a French decision to host an opposition ambassador, as its forces bombarded southern districts of the capital and clashes raged nationwide.

France on Saturday invited the National Coalition, the newly formed Syrian opposition bloc, to send an envoy to Paris, after President Francois Hollande met its leader, Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called on Sunday for Palestinians to stage peaceful demonstrations against Israel's military offensive on Gaza militant groups.

"I call on the Palestinian people to intensify their peaceful demonstrations in the streets against the Israeli aggression in Gaza," he said at a meeting with the Palestinian leadership.

Khalil al-Dallu screams. "They said Mohammed was alive!" he shouts as emergency workers pull the body of a young man from a Gaza City home leveled by an Israeli strike on Sunday.

His face quickly crumples into tears as the emergency staff tell him that his cousin is in fact dead -- one of six members of the Dallu family killed when an Israeli missile struck the Nasser neighborhood, flattening the three-story building where they lived.