GAZA CITY: Israeli troops again pounded Gaza on Friday after killing a top Hamas leader, as the group offered a conditional truce amid a diplomatic push to end the war that has killed more than 1,100 people.
At least 1,145 Palestinians have been killed and another 5,160 wounded in the Israeli onslaught. Some 600 civilians have been slain, including 355 children.
On the Israeli side, 10 soldiers and three civilians have been killed as a result of combat or rocket fire.
The army locked down the occupied West Bank for 48 hours after Hamas called for a day of wrath against the offensive in Gaza that on Thursday saw one of its top leaders, interior minister Saeed Siam, killed in an air strike.
Siam is the most senior leader killed in the war, a Hamas hardliner who oversaw the creation of the movement s police force and was a key figure in the 2007 ouster from Gaza of forces loyal to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.
A day after Israeli raids set landmark buildings ablaze in Gaza s main city, the military pummeled the territory with some 40 air strikes against fighters, tunnels and a mosque that the Israeli army claims to have been used as a weapons store.
There was no immediate word on casualties.
In the pre-dawn hours, Israeli tanks withdrew from the Gaza City neighborhood of Tal Al-Hawa, where clashes the previous day leveled parts of the residential area and set a hospital ablaze.
Medics rushed into the area, the site of furious clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian fighters that sent hundreds of terrified civilians fleeing for safety.
Many sought shelter at the Al-Quds Hospital in the neighborhood, but the building was engulfed in flames after Hamas and Israeli troops fought pitched battles for 12 hours a few hundred meters from the medical facility.
In scenes of utter panic, patients who had been wounded could be seen struggling to get out of their beds to head outside into a cold night where clashes raged.
At least three babies in incubators and three people on life support were wheeled out of the Al-Quds hospital into the flame-lit streets.
Israel says its offensive is intended to stop the rockets but Gaza militants have continued the fire and have now launched more than 700 rockets or mortar rounds during the assault.
On the diplomatic front, Egypt pressed on with its Western-backed efforts to broker a truce in Israel’s deadliest ever offensive on Gaza.
Israeli negotiator Amos Gilad was due to return to Egypt on Friday to discuss the details of a possible ceasefire, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s office said.
Gilad held four hours of talks in Cairo on Thursday.
And in what was seen as a key breakthrough, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was to travel to Washington on Friday to sign a memorandum on joint efforts to halt smuggling along the Gaza-Egypt border.
Securing international guarantees on stemming arms smuggling into Gaza has been one of Israel’s key demands.
The deputy head of Hamas’s Damascus-based leadership in exile, Mussa Abu Marzuk, told AFP the Islamists were ready to accept a one-year renewable truce if Israel pulls its troops out of Gaza.
Hamas is awaiting Israel’s response, Abu Marzuk said, adding that the offer is also conditional on Israel’s lifting of the crippling blockade it has imposed on Gaza since the Islamists seized power.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon was due to meet Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank town of Ramallah before continuing to Turkey on a regional tour aimed at securing a truce.
Israel’s offensive has sparked widespread outrage across the globe and on Thursday the Jewish state was roasted during an emergency meeting of the UN General Assembly.
The offensive has sparked widespread concern about a humanitarian crisis breaking out in one of the world’s most densely populated places where the vast majority of the 1.5 million population depends on foreign aid.
Tones of aid went up in flames on Thursday after an Israeli strike hit a UN compound, setting alight a warehouse.
