Gaza death toll rises to 1105 including 355 children:

Hamas offeres conditional truce

GAZA: Israel’s offensive on Gaza ploughed on into its 21st day on Friday after new deadly strikes that set ablaze the enclave, while diplomatic efforts gathered pace and Hamas offered a conditional truce.

The Israeli army said it will lock down the occupied West Bank for 48 hours as Hamas called for a day of “wrath” on Friday against the offensive on Gaza, as the death toll soared.

Gaza medics said that 1,105 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched Operation Cast Lead on December 27, including 355 children, with at least 5,130 people wounded.

At least 50 Palestinians were killed in fighting on Thursday, including a top Hamas leader, as tanks pressed into the heart of Gaza City setting landmark buildings ablaze, including a hospital filled with refugees.

Said Siam, interior minister in Gaza’s Hamas government, was slain along with his brother and son in an air strike on the brother’s house north of Gaza City, Hamas said, as its armed wing vowed to avenge his death.

A Hamas hardliner, Siam had created the Executive Force, a militia that played a key role in the Islamist takeover of Gaza in June 2007. He is the highest-ranking Hamas official killed since Israel unleashed its offensive.

He was killed in a day of fierce fighting in which Israeli tanks rolled into the centre of Gaza City and forces struck a hospital, a media building and a UN compound, setting ablaze a warehouse filled with food aid.

A tide of terrified civilians, many gripping wailing children, fled the advancing Israeli troops as warplanes pounded the impoverished enclave in a bid to stem Palestinian rocket fire.

Hundreds of people took shelter in the Al-Quds hospital in Gaza’s Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood but after nightfall they were forced to flee the facility engulfed in flames.

Patients who had been wounded in the fighting could be seen struggling to get out of their beds only to head out into an icy night pierced by gunfire, according to an AFP photographer.

At least three babies in incubators and three people on life support were wheeled out into the flame-lit streets.

Despite the onslaught, Gaza militants continued to rain rockets and mortar rounds on southern Israel, where 25 projectiles crashed on Thursday wounding five people, one of them seriously, the army and medics said.

GAZA CITY, Friday, AFP