Israel pounds Gaza again

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli aircraft and tanks pounded the Gaza Strip on Wednesday and troops battled Palestinian guerrillas on the ground as U.S. backing for a proposed truce raised expectations of an end to the 12-day-old offensive.

"We believe a ceasefire is necessary," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, adding that she was pressing Israel to move forward with an Egyptian proposal backed by Europeans.

Israel's assault resumed fiercely after a first, brief pause to help Gaza's 1.5 million people stock up on supplies.

But with both the outgoing administration of George W. Bush and the hitherto silent President-elect Barack Obama speaking out on the need for peace, officials said Israel had agreed with the "principles" of the Egyptian deal and would send an envoy to Cairo to discuss details of how it might be put into practice.

That may yet take time.

Rice echoed Israel's concerns that a deal achieve its goal of stopping the Hamas Islamists who rule Gaza from hitting Israel with rockets: "It has to be a ceasefire that will not allow a return to the status quo," she said.

However, Israeli ministers put off a decision on whether to launch a new phase of the war by storming Gaza's urban centers.

Hamas said it was looking at the Egyptian plan, brokered by France, which addresses Israel's demand that Hamas be prevented from rearming through smuggling tunnels from Egypt and also addresses Hamas's call for an end to Israel's wider embargo.

A further 20 people were killed, medics said, including three children in an air strike on a car. It was a lower toll than on other days but took the total of Palestinian deaths since December 27 to at least 658 -- by far the bloodiest episode in decades in the conflict between Israel and Palestinians.

Israeli television aired army footage showing troops herding handcuffed and blindfolded prisoners in civilian clothes.

Ten Israelis have died in the past 12 days, seven of them soldiers, including four killed by "friendly" fire.

U.N. officials have said a quarter of the Palestinian dead were civilians, while other accounts put that proportion higher.

SCHOOL CARNAGE

Tuesday's killing by Israeli shells of 42 people, including women and children sheltering in a United Nations-run school in Jabalya refugee camp, intensified international pressure on Israel to call a halt. U.N. officials denied an Israeli army account that militants had been firing from the school.

Israel, however, has said it will press on until Hamas can no longer hit its southern towns with rockets.