Israel’s siege of this slender stretch of Mediterranean seacoast took seven more lives Thursday even as Palestinian political factions met to plan for when the crisis ends.

The Israeli Defense Forces continued their assault on the cluster of cinderblock homes that make up the Mughazi refugee camp near the border with Israel. By day’s end, 4 Palestinians had been killed by tank fire and 3 had died of wounds sustained Wednesday, bringing the death toll from two days of fighting to 16. Two were under age 18, said Assad Rayan, an administrator at Al Aksa Hospital in Deir al Balah.

[The Israeli forces left the camp early Friday, Reuters reported, citing reports from witnesses.]

The Israeli military dropped leaflets in Arabic over Gaza City on Thursday warning residents that the army would begin striking homes that held weapons. It advised anyone living near such weapons caches to leave immediately. “You have been warned!” the leaflets read.

Israel has carried out occasional airstrikes against private homes believed to house weapons factories, an Israeli military spokeswoman said, but the language in the leaflets did represent “a little harsher” policy than in the past.

Even as the fighting continued, the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, met with leaders of Hamas, the political faction that swept to power in elections earlier this year, to discuss the makeup of a “national unity government” that would reduce the role of Hamas.

The current Palestinian government has faced crippling diplomatic and financial isolation. Much of the world, led by the United States, the European Union and the United Nations, considers Hamas a terrorist organization and has refused to deal with a Hamas-led government.

Hamas and Mr. Abbas’s Fatah faction had agreed to form a coalition government along the lines laid out in a letter by a group of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. But the talks were interrupted last month by the Palestinian militant raid on Israeli troops stationed outside southern Gaza. An Israeli corporal was seized, setting off the current siege.

“This government would be based on an agenda that would be accepted by the world community,” said Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a close aide to Mr. Abbas.

An Egyptian delegation also arrived in Gaza on Thursday for talks on how to end the current siege. Egypt has been acting as a mediator between Hamas and Israel.

The Israeli Army said it continued to pound Gaza with artillery on Thursday, hoping to deter rocket attacks against Israel in the north and tunneling in the south. Palestinian militants use tunnels across the Egyptian border to smuggle weapons and used a tunnel into Israel to carry out last month’s attack. The army said an Israeli civilian living in the western Negev was slightly wounded by a Palestinian rocket on Thursday.

Israel also carried out airstrikes against what it said were two groups of militants preparing to fire anti-tank missiles at Israeli troops. Israeli gunboats fired warning shots off the coast to keep fishing boats from straying from shore. A car belonging to President Abbas’s guards was reportedly hit by the gunfire.

“There is a naval closure, and fishing boats are not allowed right now,” the army spokeswoman said.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company