Israeli Troops Reach Gaza City Outskirts

Israeli troops were fighting on the outskirts of Gaza City today after another night of heavy bombing and shelling as the head of UN was due in Cairo for urgent talks to end the conflict.

There was heavy fighting in northern Gaza and around the edges of Gaza City, from where Israeli troops have mounted raids to within a mile of the city center. Early today, the old Gaza city hall, a former court building, was destroyed in an air strike which damaged many shops in the nearby market.

Israel's military said it hit 60 sites overnight, including the police headquarters in Gaza City that had been hit on the first day of the operation, as well as rocket launching sites, weapons stores and 35 smuggling tunnels under the border with Egypt. Six Israeli soldiers were injured.

Meanwhile, three rockets fired from Lebanon landed in northern Israel in the second such attack since Israeli forces launched their Gaza offensive. Police said the rockets landed in open areas and there were no reports of damage or injuries. People in northern Israel were asked to head to bomb shelters. Four rockets were fired on northern Israel last Thursday. Hezbollah denied responsibility and speculation focused on small Palestinian groups in Lebanon.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, was due in Cairo where a Hamas delegation returned to talks with Egyptian intelligence officials. Egypt was said to be pressing Hamas to accept a one-year ceasefire. Israel said it would send its most senior defence ministry official, Amos Gilad, to Cairo tomorrow on a trip that had already been postponed several times.

Rifts among Israel's leaders over the conflict are appearing to deepen. The defence minister, Ehud Barak, is pressing for a one-week halt to the fighting to allow in humanitarian aid, according to a report today in the Ha'aretz newspaper. Barak believes the 19-day offensive has bolstered Israel's deterrent power and believes continuing the fight would bring "only operational complications and casualties," the paper said.

"Barak is proposing the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] cease its fire, hold its positions and keep the reservists under arms, and thus negotiate with Egypt and the United States on an arrangement that would prevent arms smuggling into the strip," it said.

Barak fears that when Barack Obama assumes the US presidency on Tuesday he will demand an immediate Israeli ceasefire. Another risk was a tougher UN security council resolution - a previous resolution last week calling for a ceasefire was ignored as "unworkable" by Israel.

Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister, also favours ending the conflict, according to Israeli reports, although she does not want any agreement with Hamas.

However, the prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has made clear he would rather escalate the conflict in the hope of more seriously damaging Hamas.

Israel's military believes only a few hundred Hamas militia have been killed and that the movement still has many rockets ready to launch into southern Israel. Of the 200 Palestinians detained by Israeli troops, fewer than 30 were found to have any link with militant groups in Gaza, a report said.

Israel's chief of staff, Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi, told a parliamentary committee there was more fighting to come. "We have achieved a lot in hitting Hamas and its infrastructure, its rule and its armed wing, but there is still work ahead," he said. Israeli jets had bombed "all of the known tunnels" on the Gazan border with Egypt "very seriously hurting Hamas's ability to smuggle in weapons," the general said.

Despite nearly three weeks of intense Israeli bombing, Hamas fired 18 rockets into Israel on Tuesday - although that is less than one third of the daily rockets at the start of the offensive.

The death toll on the Palestinian side rose to 971, with more than 4,400 injured. Thirteen Israelis have been killed, including three civilians. At least 35,000 Palestinians were holed up in UN schools operating as emergency shelters. Tens of thousands more are staying with relatives or friends.

Others had nowhere to go. In Rafah late on Tuesday night Jawad Harb, an aid worker with Care International, described how he and hundreds of his neighbors ran from their homes near the Egyptian border after waves of air strikes. Leaflets dropped yesterday told them to evacuate but the local UN schools were already overcrowded with thousands of others.

"These air strikes came down. It was terrible," he said. "People started panicking, about 350 or 400 of them, and they left their homes, grabbed whatever they could and ran." After some time they returned, along with Harb, his wife and their six children, but waited anxiously for the bombing to restart. "We're waiting by the front door, with blankets ready," he said.

Around two-thirds of the territory's 1.5m people have no electricity; the rest have only an intermittent supply, the UN said. Hospitals are overloaded with the injured, and 500,000 Gazans still have no access to running water. "Israeli bombardment is causing extensive destruction to homes and to public infrastructure throughout the Gaza Strip and is jeopardizing water, sanitation and medical services," the UN said.

Human Rights Watch called for immediate broad humanitarian access to Gaza and evacuation of the wounded through both Israel and Egypt. It said steps taken by Israel to allow in aid, including a three-hour lull in fighting each day, were "vastly inadequate in relation to the magnitude of the crisis."