Agence France-Presse,
GAZA CITY: Israel killed a top Hamas leader on Thursday as tanks pressed into the heart of Gaza City setting landmark buildings ablaze, including a hospital filled with refugees that was engulfed in a ball of flames.
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.
His sister-in-law, bodyguard, and four neighbours also died in the strike, according to Gaza medics, who said more than 40 Palestinians were killed in fighting across the territory on Thursday.
The latest deaths pushed the overall toll past 1,100 and cast a heavy shadow over ongoing peace efforts.
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 the war began on December 27.
The assassination came after 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 inside Gaza's main city as warplanes pounded the impoverished Hamas-ruled enclave in a bid to stem Palestinian rocket fire.
Hundreds of people took shelter from fierce fighting in the Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza's Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood, but were forced to flee the facility after nightfall when it was engulfed in flames.
The building had been hit by an Israeli tank shell earlier in the day, causing part of it to collapse and igniting the blaze.
As the fire flared hours later, 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 Israeli onslaught, Hamas militants continued to launch projectiles Thursday, sending two long-range Grad rockets crashing into the southern Israeli city of Beersheva and wounding five people, medics said.
At least 25 rockets and mortar rounds were fired from Gaza into Israel on Thursday, with Palestinian militants having launched at least 1,090 projectiles since the war began, according to the army.
As the battles raged on the ground, Egypt pressed ahead with Western-backed efforts to end the war in which an estimated 600 Palestinian civilians have been killed.
In what could be a major breakthrough, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni would travel to Washington to sign a memorandum on joint efforts to halt smuggling beneath the Gaza-Egypt border.
Shutting down the hundreds of tunnels beneath the frontier that form Hamas's main resupply route was one of Israel's chief war aims.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon arrived in Israel shortly before an Israeli tank shell hit the UN refugee agency's main Gaza compound, wounding three employees and torching a warehouse filled with tens of millions of dollars worth of aid.
Ban said he had conveyed his “strong protest and outrage” and demanded an explanation in talks with Israeli officials as part of a regional tour aimed at cajoling the two warring parties into a ceasefire agreement.
Olmert said that Israeli troops had shelled the compound in Gaza in response to fire coming from the building, charges denied by the UN refugee agency.
The European Union's Czech presidency joined a chorus of international protests at the strike, calling it “simply unacceptable,” while Amnesty International said the strike could constitute a war crime.
Another Israeli raid hit a building housing several media outlets in central Gaza City, wounding two cameramen.
Since Israel unleashed its Operation Cast Lead, at least 1,105 people have been killed and at least another 5,130 wounded, according to Gaza medics. Among the dead are at least 355 children and 100 women.
Israel says 10 of its soldiers and three civilians have died as a result of combat or rocket fire in the same period.
Egyptian officials said Israeli envoy Amos Gilad responded “favourably” to Cairo's plan for a ceasefire, which would halt the fighting and the weapons smuggling and lift a crippling 18-month blockade of the territory.
An Israeli government spokesman said however no decision had yet been reached on the plan.
Hamas also has yet to reach a final decision, having said only that it does not reject the “broad outlines” of the proposal.
Former British prime minister Tony Blair, now the international community's Middle East peace envoy, said he was still hopeful for a ceasefire, saying the Egyptian plan contained all the necessary elements.
“I hope very much in a short space of time there will be a stop,” he said.
