Two Egyptian children injured by Israeli bombs with another 29 Palestinians killed in Gaza

Another 29 Palestinians were killed today as Israel continued its offensive through the Gaza Strip.

Two other countries were pulled into the fighting on Sunday, with shots fired at Israeli army engineers working on the frontier fence from Syria, and two Egyptian children and two police officers wounded by shrapnel from Israeli bombs near a crossing point at Egypt's border with the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian death-toll now stands at 874 casualties after 16 days of fighting, as the Israeli forces edge into the Gaza Strip's most populous area.

Smoke rises following an Israeli missile strike in the east of Gaza City today

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said was close to achieving its aims as thick black smoke rose over the city, despite international calls for a ceasefire.

Medical workers said about half the Palestinians killed on Sunday were civilians.

'Israel is getting close to achieving the goals it set for itself,' Olmert told his cabinet in Jerusalem, giving no timeframe for an end to a campaign launched with the declared aim of ending Hamas rocket attacks.

'But patience, determination and effort are still needed to realise these goals in a manner that will change the security situation in the south.'



The children, aged two and five, and the two officers were the first Egyptians to be wounded by Israeli bombs since the Israeli offensive against Gaza began. They were taken to hospitals in el-Arish.

There were no details of the gravity of their injuries.

A Palestinian boy inspects a destroyed building following an Israeli air strike on Gaza

Witnesses said Egyptian houses near the border and government offices at the crossing were damaged by shrapnel on Sunday.

Israel has expanded its air campaign to the southern Gaza Strip, aiming at smuggling tunnels running under the border with Egypt, a network that is Gaza's lifeline to the outside world.

Israel says militants use the tunnels to smuggle weapons into Gaza.

One Egyptian border guard has been killed and two have been wounded in clashes with Palestinians trying to enter Egypt since the Israeli offensive began.

Israeli warplanes have also been flying over Egyptian territory during their bombing runs along the border between Gaza and Egypt.

The witnesses, who have spent many hours close to the Rafah crossing point between Egypt and Gaza, said they had seen the Israeli planes fly over on several occasions, often at such low altitude that it was clear they were over Egyptian territory.

An Israeli soldier looks out from an armoured personnel carrier as smoke rises across the border above the northern Gaza Strip

The three witnesses, who are not involved in the conflict, said they wanted to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the matter. The Egyptian government has faced a barrage of criticism for cooperating with Israel in the blockade of Gaza over the past six months.

An Israeli military spokesman had no immediate comment. Egyptian Defence Ministry officials either were unavailable or had no comment on the reports, and it was not clear if Israel was giving Egypt any warning of the flights.

Under the peace treaty which Egypt and Israel signed in 1979, Israel has the right to fly combat planes up to the international border, while Egyptian combat planes cannot fly east of a zone which covers roughly the western third of the Sinai peninsula.



Palestinians react after hearing news that their mother has been killed in Israeli shelling in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip

The Israeli army said troops in the Golan Heights came under small arms fire from Syria on Sunday and that, although no one was hurt, it had complained to the United Nations force that monitors the frontier area.

'There were a number of bullets fired from Syria at an Israeli army force doing engineering work near the fence,' an army spokesman said of the incident, which came amid an Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip that has outraged many Arabs.

'No one was hurt but a vehicle was damaged,' the spokesman added. 'Forces in the field are examining the incident and a complaint was sent to UNDOF which sent a team there. The circumstances of the incident are still unclear.'

'I think we're in for the long run,' Ms Eisen said.



'I don't think we can do it quickly. We are not looking for a quick fix but for something that is workable, long-lasting and beneficial for the people on both sides.



'We feel that if we cut and get out now, we'll have achieved nothing. There may be occasional lulls and intensifications but the military operation will continue at its current level until the agreement is reached.'



Palestinians gather next to a building used by Hamas after it was hit in an Israeli missile strike in the Zeitun neighborhood in Gaza City - 30 nearby civilians were killed by this strike

Gaza City is nearly obscured by the smoke from Israeli shelling and other military operations

Friday saw the opening of talks brokered by Egypt, with the arrival in Cairo of teams from Israel, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, the semi-autonomous body still responsible for the West Bank, which was overthrown in Gaza by a Hamas coup in 2007.

However, yesterday the teams did not meet. Ms Eisen said: 'They had a day off.'



She said Israel was aware of the mounting international pressure to stop the bloodshed.



But it could not accept last week's UN ceasefire resolution because it 'did not address any of the fundamental issues' that Israel sought to resolve.



Yesterday saw an escalation from both sides, as the Gazan death toll reached 820, about half of them civilians.



An Israeli army spokesman said ten Israeli soldiers and three civilians had also been killed, four by Israeli 'friendly fire'.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, right, abstains from voting, as Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Gabriela Shalev, left, observes at the United Nations Security Council meeting

Hamas hit the city of Ashkelon with two rockets, one of which demolished part of an apartment building. It caused only 'light' injuries, the spokesman said.



Gaza was pounded again from the air, from naval boats and by armoured ground forces in the north, south and eastern borders of the strip.



Israeli ground troops were said to be still operating mainly inside tanks but military chiefs said they had not deployed infantry in the denser sections of the strip's towns and refugee camps.

However, Israel has called up thousands of reservists and is training them in house-to-house urban warfare at a huge desert camp mocked up as a Gazan town 12 miles from Gaza.



The UN said there were widespread food shortages and that kidney patients risked death from blood poisoning because they could not reach Gaza's only dialysis centre. Also, treatment of cancer patients had stopped.



Meanwhile, Lord Levy, Tony Blair's former special envoy to the Middle East, claims George Bush bears much of the responsibility for the Gaza bloodshed.

Writing in today's Mail on Sunday, Lord Levy says: 'Despite Blair's repeated attempts to convince Washington otherwise, President George W. Bush Showed near-zero interest or engagement in Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy during the first seven years of his presidency'.



Lord Levy, a regular visitor to the region in his time as adviser to Mr Blair, adds: 'Without strong and continued US participation, any Middle East peace process is doomed to failure. Bush's refusal to provide it was, in my view, nothing short of catastrophic.'



The Israeli Defence Force today released this map showing the rocket range into Israel from Gaza. The IDF claims one million people in Israel are within striking range of Gaza rockets