Israeli troops take grip on Gaza, civilians suffer

Israeli troops and tanks split the Gaza Strip and ringed its main city yesterday in an offensive against Hamas that has killed more than 500 Palestinians, many of them civilians.

Israeli tanks poured shells and machinegun-fire into suspected militant positions and war planes as Hamas fighters fought back with mortars and rockets.

Hamas fighters kept up rocket salvoes against southern Israel, defying efforts by the Middle East's most powerful army to stamp out the threat Israel had set out to achieve.

European Union foreign policy chiefs launched a mission to seek a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip but acknowledged they faced a difficult task persuading the parties to stop fighting.

At least 42 Palestinians, most of them civilians, were killed yesterday as Israeli shells slammed into houses and Gaza's main shopping district, medical sources said.

"We don't intend neither to occupy Gaza nor to crush Hamas, but to crush terror. And Hamas needs a real and serious lesson. They are now getting it," Israeli President Shimon Peres said in an interview on the ABC News programme This Week.

The Saturday night invasion of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip followed a week of Israeli bombardments from land, sea and air - the most serious Israeli-Palestinian fighting in decades.

The Palestinian death toll tallied by Gaza medical officials in the nine days of Operation Cast Lead rose to 512. A UN agency said at least a quarter of the dead were civilians. A Palestinian human rights group put the figure at 40 per cent.

One Israeli soldier was killed and 32 were wounded in the ground offensive, Israel said. Four Israelis have been killed by the Hamas rocket strikes since December 27.

Israeli officials said the offensive could last many days.

Calls for a ceasefire from the US, Israel's main backer, other governments and the UN failed to gain traction over disagreements about who should stop firing first.

Israeli government officials said Israel had set several goals, including weakening Hamas by killing its fighters and destroying its rocket arsenal and establishing deterrence so the group would think twice before firing cross-border salvoes.

In addition, the officials said, Israel hoped to win international backing for new security arrangements along the Egyptian-Gaza border to prevent Hamas from rearming through tunnels, which have been bombed in the current campaign.