Israel pressed on with both its air and ground offensive in Gaza on Thursday, as government officials were due to travel to Cairo to discuss Egyptian-French truce proposals, reported dpa.
Two Palestinians, who were both believed to be members of Hamas' police force and of its armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, were killed in an airstrike in the southern town of Khan Younis early Thursday, raising the total Palestinian toll of Israel's 13-day Gaza offensive to at least 704 killed and over 3,000 wounded.
Three Israeli civilians and seven soldiers have also been killed.
Residents reported heavy shelling in the southern Gaza border town of Rafah overnight, as an Israeli military spokesman said Israel bombed another 15 smuggling tunnels running under the border with Egypt, as well as what he said was the house of a militant commander who oversaw the rocket attacks from the Rafah area at nearby Israeli targets.
Some 5,000 residents of Rafah fled to two UN schools turned into shelters, after Israeli helicopters dropped leaflets warning them to leave their homes along the Gaza-Egypt border, saying Hamas was using houses along the border to hide the entrances to the weapons smuggling tunnels.
The Israeli delegation traveling to Cairo Thursday includes Amos Gilad, the head of the Israeli Defense Ministry's Diplomatic-Security Bureau and caretaker Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's foreign policy adviser Shalom Turgeman.
An Israeli Defence Ministry spokeswoman would give no details, but Israeli media reported the Israeli delegation wants to discuss the possibility of a permanent American presence along the Gaza-Egypt border.
Israel wants "guarantees" from the Egyptians and the international community that the smuggling of further rockets and parts into Gaza will stop, Israeli media reported.
The Israeli government earlier on Wednesday said it viewed Egyptian-French attempts to reach a diplomatic solution to the Gaza crisis "positively." US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday that the US, which has rejected several others, supports the Egyptian initiative.
But it also threatened to expand its ground offensive if the diplomatic attempts failed, with the Israeli cabinet in a meeting Wednesday authorizing the continuation of the Gaza offensive. Thus far, the Israeli ground troops are stationed on the outskirts of Gaza City, the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north and Khan Younis in the south, but have avoided penetrating deep into populated areas. Overall, the Israel Air Force bombed and rocketed some 60 targets overnight, including the house of a Hamas commander in the southern town of Khan Younis, the al-Nur al-Mohamadi mosque in northern Gaza City's Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, which had been "used to store rockets and as meeting point for Hamas militants" and some 10 more "rocket storages," several of them in the houses of Hamas militants throughout the strip, the military said.
Palestinian militants also fired a number of rockets into Israel.
