The Israeli strikes targeted a building in the Gaza City used by a paramilitary force set up by the Palestinian government and a house in the Gaza-Egypt border town of Rafah that had already been hit a day earlier.

Late Tuesday, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy was killed by Israeli fire while in his house. Two family members were also wounded.

At least 134 Palestinians were killed since Israel launched a wide-scale offensive on Gaza on the pretext of seeking the release of an Israeli soldier taken prisoners by Palestinian resistance groups.

Wednesday's killings bring to 5,273 the number of people killed since the start of Al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000, most of them Palestinians, according to an AFP count.

Incursion

Dozens of Israeli tanks backed by helicopter gunships also pushed deep into eastern Gaza, eyewitnesses told IslamOnline.net.

Israeli troops clashed with Palestinian resistance fighters on the edge of the Jabalya refugees camp.

The military wing of Hamas said it had fired rocket-propelled grenades at Israeli tanks, leaving three damaged.

It also said it had fired two rocket attacks into Israel. The Israeli military reported no casualties and said three rockets landed in Israel.

During its incursion, Israeli troops destroyed the infrastructure, crooked agricultural lands and demolished several offices of the Palestinian government, eyewitnesses said.

The latest Israeli attacks came only hours after Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas called for an "immediate ceasefire" in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories after talks with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

"The aggression against the Gaza Strip and the West Bank must stop immediately, followed by a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks," he said.

The US top diplomat echoed a similar call.

"It is important to end the Gaza crisis. We need to be able to make progress because the Palestinian people have lived too long in violence and the daily humiliations that go along with the circumstances here."

Living conditions for the 1.4 million people in densely-packed Gaza Strip have badly deteriorated since the West suspended direct aid to the Hamas-led government, plunging the coastal territory deeper into financial crisis.

Her two daughters-- two-year-old Shaf Oukal and nine-year-old Mary Oukal-- were also killed in the Israeli attack.

Amal's two other daughters-- 12-year-old Ibtisam and seven-year-old Sommaya, were injured.

So far, 23 people were killed across Gaza on Wednesday, including 10 militants, nine civilians and four children, according to Mouaweya Hassanein, a Palestinian Health Ministry official.

Earlier in the day, 20 Palestinians were killed and more than 50 others wounded when dozens of Israeli tanks and armored vehicles, backed by aircraft and unmanned drones, stormed northeast of Gaza City.

About 160 Palestinians have been killed and more than 500 wounded since the beginning of the massive Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip on June 28 in a bid to free a captive soldier and stop Palestinian rocket attacks.

Local Palestinian residents said that the Israeli army had warned them to steer clear of the area before the air raid.

There was no immediate report of any casualties.

Israel launched a massive air and ground offensive into the Gaza Strip on June 28, three days after Palestinian militants killed two Israeli soldiers and kidnapped a third in a cross-border attack.

The Israeli army says the operation is aimed to bring home the abducted soldier and halt Palestinian rocket attacks.

The Israeli army put the West Bank under the closure a week ago, citing intelligence that Palestinian militants there might carryout a bomb attack inside Israel.

The Gaza Strip has been sealed since Palestinian militant skilled two Israeli soldiers and kidnapped a third during a cross-border attack on June 25.

But the report said that humanitarian deliveries would be permitted to go into Gaza.

Israel has continued an almost-one-month-old massive air and ground offensive in the Gaza Strip in a bid to rescue the abducted soldier and halt Palestinian rocket attacks.

The privately owned Lebanese Broadcasting Corp TV station said Israeli jets struck the army base at Aamchit, 50km along the Beirut-Tripoli highway north of the Lebanese capital near the coast and knocked down a relay tower in an adjacent field of antennas belonging to Radio Liban.

Other Israeli aircraft blasted targets in and around several villages and towns in the mainly Shi'ite Muslim south, and artillery batteries opened up from Israel's side of the border.

House-to-house fighting

Hezbollah guerrillas killed nine Israeli soldiers in house-to-house fighting in a border town and a nearby village yesterday, as senior international diplomats failed at a Rome conference to agree on calling for an immediate ceasefire.

An Israeli general said the offensive, which has killed 433 Lebanese, mostly civilians, would go on "for several more weeks". The fighting began on July 12 when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight in a cross-border raid.

A total of 51 Israelis (mostly Israeli soldiers) have been killed in Hezbollah attacks that have included rockets being fired into northern Israel.

Foreign ministers at the Rome conference pledged to work urgently for a "lasting, permanent and sustainable" ceasefire, but did not call for the fighting to stop now, as Lebanon and its Arab allies had demanded.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cautioned Syria and Iran, Hezbollah's main allies, that they faced further isolation if they tried to scupper US-led attempts to get a ceasefire.

"This needs to be between Lebanon and Israel," Rice told reporters en route from Rome to Malaysia.

The United States has backed Israeli demands for Hezbollah to pull back from the border and ultimately disarm.

Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council and the country's chief nuclear negotiator, has flown to Damascus for talks with senior Syrian officials about the situation in the Middle East, diplomats said.

In stark contrast to Rice, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Iran and Syria should be included in efforts to halt the war. Rice blames Tehran and Damascus for stoking the conflict.

Israel, Iran and Syria were not invited to the Rome talks.

In the Gaza Strip, scene of another Israeli offensive, Israeli forces killed 24 Palestinians, including at least 12 militants, during fighting.

Israel has killed 141 Palestinians in a month-long campaign to recover a soldier captured by Palestinian militants and stop rocket fire from Gaza.

'Facing complete destruction'

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Lebanon and the Palestinian territories faced complete destruction.

"At the same time there is a refusal to reach a ceasefire that has been supported by European countries as well as Arab countries," Abbas told reporters on a visit to Algeria.

In the fighting in Lebanon, Lebanese security sources said Hezbollah guerrillas ambushed an Israeli force advancing on the town of Bint Jbeil, four km (2.5 miles) from the border.

The Israeli army said eight of its soldiers were killed at Bint Jbeil and 22 wounded. An Israeli officer was killed and three soldiers were wounded in a Hezbollah attack on the nearby village of Maroun al-Ras.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert strove to limit diplomatic damage from the killing of four UN observers in an air strike on their post in south Lebanon on Tuesday. He told Annan he was sorry about the deaths but expressed shock at the UN leader's suggestion the attack was deliberate.

An Irish army officer in south Lebanon warned Israel six times that air strikes threatened the lives of UN observers before Tuesday's deaths, Ireland's Foreign Ministry said.

Israeli bombing has forced an estimated 750,000 people in Lebanon to flee their homes. Many are trapped in areas where fighting is raging. [just where Israel wants them]

A large UN aid convoy reached the southern port of Tyre to distribute deliveries to an area devastated by Israeli bombing.

The insanity of the Jewish State that is brutally attacking families and children in South Lebanon and in Beirut's southern suburb has almost become an everyday feature in the Palestinian territories.

Can the disaster that has befallen Lebanon, in which fathers, mothers and children have lost their homes and relatives, be a solution for the US administration and the Jewish State?

Lebanon is grateful for the millions-of-dollars worth of humanitarian aid from the US, but it will never forget that the US administration gave Israel the green light to continue with the shelling and destruction in this dirty war.

The US administration claims that it had asked Israel not to hit Lebanon's infrastructure. But Israel has indiscriminately destroyed everything: airports, bridges, seaports, roads and houses. Israel's aim is to devastate and kill.

In Lebanon, as in the Palestinian territories, Israel's soldiers, the grandsons of the victims of the Holocaust, have demonstrated their inclination to use terrifying weapons, such as phosphorus bombs. This is disgraceful for a people who had suffered from torture and brutality.

Whatever the outcome of Israel's war on Lebanon, the Jewish State has shown that it knows no solution except the use of force. This solution leads to more violence, war and hatred.

Nobody in the world knows what the outcome of the balance of power in the world will be. Nobody knows whether Israel has weakened Hezbollah's military capabilities or defeated it. Either way, the major victim is the Lebanese people, who are now certain that they are paying for the war of others on their soil. The US and its ally, Israel, are fighting Iran and Syria on Lebanese soil, and are imposing a blockade on Lebanon, while the world's superpower claims that it will ask Israel to lift it.

Israel caused the closure Rafik Hariri Airport in Beirut under the pretext that Hezbollah uses it for bringing in arms. Many Lebanese people therefore went to Damascus, the only outlet to the outside world. Israel shelled all the Lebanese seaports. Meanwhile, Hezbollah's rockets continuously fall on several Israeli cities. The US administration claims it wants to help Prime Minister Fouad Seniora's government. But how? By maintaining the blockade on Lebanon, or by continuing with the dirty war?

Hezbollah, on the other hand, is held responsible for what it has dragged Lebanon into. Israel is a well-known enemy, and its tactics in Palestine are obvious. Does Hezbollah have the right to bring destruction, misery, displacement and disaster to Lebanon and its people? Does it have the right to turn Lebanese soil into a battlefield for others? Can this be called resistance? However, the answers to these questions have been put back until the end of the war.

The best solution is that Resolution 1559 be implemented of Lebanon's free will and that the State regain its role and spread its control over all its territory. Lebanon needs a national army that will not drag it into a venture that may end its existence.