The Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip today claimed a significant blow against the top ranks of Hamas when an air strike killed Nizar Rayyan, one of the movement’s inner circle.

Mr Rayyan, one of Hamas’s most hardline political figures who had advocated renewing suicide bombings inside Israel, died in a targeted strike on his home. He is the most senior Hamas leader to have been killed since 2004, and only yesterday vowed that rocket attacks from Gaza would hit Israel “even deeper” than they have so far.

Medical officials said that another nine people, including two of Rayan’s four wives and four of his 12 children, were killed in the bombing on an eight storey apartment building in Jabalya refugee camp. The airstrike blew a huge hole in the side of the building and sent a thick plume of smoke into the air.

Mr Rayyan, a 52-year-old lecturer at Gaza’s Islamist University who was rated by some amongst Hamas's top decision makers, had mentored suicide bombers and would sometimes go on patrol with Hamas fighters.

Hamas said Israel would pay a “heavy price” for his death. Many other Hamas leaders are in hiding in anticipation of assassination attempts.

The strike came the morning after an emergency session of the UN Security Council failed to agree on a resolution on the conflict.

The meeting was adjourned without a vote after Arab countries demanded an immediate ceasefire, but Britain and America blocked a resolution proposed by Libya and Egypt that failed to mention Hamas rocket fire on Israel as a cause of the conflict. Western delegates said that the resolution was unbalanced, adding that negotiations would continue in a bid to reach an agreed text.

With the Palestinian death toll now over 400, a quarter of whom were civilians according to UN figures, foreign pressure is growing on both sides to hold their fire.

Israel last night dismissed as “unrealistic” the French plan for a 48-hour truce that would allow in more humanitarian aid for Gaza’s 1.5 million residents. More than 1,700 of these residents have so far been injured, according to the UN, in what is the deadliest conflict in the Gaza Strip in four decades.

Dr Hassan Khalaf, the director of the Al Shifa hospital which has taken many of the casualties, said that his staff were facing an impossible struggle to care for a total number of wounded that he placed at nearer 2,000. He said that so far 40 Palestinian children and 28 women had been killed by Israeli attacks, and that 270 children and 160 women had been hurt.

Three Israeli civilians and one soldier have also died in Hamas rocket attacks that have reached deeper into Israel than ever before, growing ever closer to major centres of population and bringing one-eighth of Israel’s inhabitants within rocket range.

Hours before the killing of Mr Rayan today, Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, said that his country was fighting Hamas with an “iron fist”.

“I very much hope we will succeed in achieving our goals quickly,” he added.

Israel has dismissed international complaints that its bombardment of the tiny, densely populated Gaza Strip has created a humanitarian crisis, with no fuel, little food and hospitals running out of basic supplies including anaesthetic and plaster for broken limbs.

“There is no humanitarian crisis in the Strip, and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce,” said Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, on a visit to Paris.“Israel has been supplying comprehensive humanitarian aid to the Strip ... and has even been stepping this up by the day.”

Ms Livni reiterated her government’s rejection of a French-proposed ceasefire in the Gaza Strip to allow in humanitarian aid.

But analysts say that, while continuing to talk tough, Jerusalem appears to be contemplating a possible diplomatic exit from its bombing campaign, saying today that any future truce with Hamas would have to be policed by international monitors.

A newspaper poll showed that ordinary Israelis are not eager to see the operation expand beyond the air-based campaign, a poll Thursday showed.

The survey of 472 people showed that 52 per cent want the air assault to continue, while only 19 per cent wanted to see a ground offensive. Twenty per cent favored a truce.

The same poll showed dove-ish and centrist parties would get 60 seats in Israel’s 120-seat parliament if elections were held today, up from 53 before the operation. The big winner was Labor, led by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, the Gaza operation’s mastermind. Hardline and religious parties dropped from 65 to 60. The Dialog company poll had a margin of error of 4.6 percentage points.

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