UK Nick Clegg: Israel's Gaza response "collective punishment"

LONDON - Israel's retaliatory air strikes on Gaza have been "deliberately disproportionate" and amount to "collective punishment", Britain's Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said on Thursday, in unusually robust criticism of a close British ally.

Clegg made his comments on the tenth day of fighting between Israel and Hamas during a five-hour humanitarian truce which prompted a temporary halt to Israel's air strikes as well as rocket fire from the Palestinian enclave of Gaza into Israel.