Smash hit

In a separate attack, an Israeli shell hit the main vegetable market in the city. A Times reporter at Shifa hospital saw six ambulances and seven cars – there is a shortage of emergency vehicles – ferry in the wounded. Two were badly maimed children. Medics said five people were killed in the market bombing, and 40 wounded. Israel said it had no knowledge of a market being hit.

With thousands of troops flooding in from the elite Golani Brigade, the Givati Brigade – which carried out thousands of operations in Gaza before the 2005 disengagment – and the Engineering and Armoured Corps, Israel said stage two of Operation Cast Lead was a success.

A soldier from the Golani Reconnaissance Unit, stopped at a petrol station to buy chocolate bars before entering Gaza.

"We know what we are doing," the soldier told the Jerusalem Post. "Golani has been in Gaza before and we were successful. We expect the same results this time as well."

Israeli forces did lose one soldier to a mortar attack, which together with buried mines were the greatest threat facing the Israeli troops, military officials said. Around 30 Israeli soldiers were wounded in the first day of fighting.

It said it had succeeded in killing three senior Hamas military commanders, including Mohammed Shaltoch, head of Hamas special forces in Rafah, and others in charge of rocket launching squads.

While Israel has insisted it does not intend to re-occupy the Gaza Strip and its 1.5 million impoverished inhabitants, it has warned that the fighting in Gaza could be drawn-out, possibly lasting weeks.

Ehud Olmert, the outgoing Israeli Prime Minister, told his weekly cabinet meeting today that the ground offensive – which carries a risk of heavy casualties on both sides, and of Israel getting mired in urban warfare – had been “unavoidable.”

Israel’s main aim is to end Hamas rocket fire, but it also wants to deal a lasting blow to the Islamist movement, which refuses to recognize the Jewish state’s right to even exist.

Diplomatic efforts to secure a ceasefire have been rejected by both sides.

“We shall not accept the idea that Hamas will continue to fire and we shall declare a cease-fire. It does not make any sense,” said Shimon Peres, Israel’s largely ceremonial president.

“We don’t intend neither to occupy Gaza nor to crush Hamas, but to crush terror. And Hamas needs a real and serious lesson. They are now getting it.”

The massive escalation in the past week, and the distant prospect of a quick resolution, have triggered alarm and huge protest demonstrations around the world.

Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian envoy to the United Nations, warned thousands more Palestinian civilians will be killed and injured if the Israeli assault is not stopped soon. Already more than 500 have died and an estimated 2,300 have been wounded.

“This is immoral, this is illegal, this is unacceptable, and the Security Council cannot continue to sit on its hands and not force Israel to comply with its position, the position that it adopted on Sunday morning,” Mr Mansour said.

Gordon Brown called today for an immediate ceasefire to halt the violence. The Prime Minister said the ongoing hostilities were a matter of “grave concern” and insisted that international pressure was being placed on both Israel and Hamas.

Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary General, also urged an immediate end to the ground offensive.

But President Bush called on Hamas "to turn away from terror" and rejected calls for a unilateral ceasefire that he said would allow the Islamists to continue hitting Israel with rockets.

Washington last night blocked the UN Security Council from demanding a ceasefire in Gaza, and the UK’s most senior diplomat at the UN, John Sawers, said he was “very disappointed” after the US refused to agree to a ceasefire statement.

Mr Brown said that it was necessary to “work harder than we’ve done for an immediate ceasefire”. “This is a very dangerous moment, I think everybody around the world is expressing grave concern,” he said.

Speaking after a third Security Council meeting on the conflict broke up on Saturday night without agreement, Alejandro Wolff, the US deputy envoy, said Washington did not want the region to “return to the status quo” that had allowed Hamas to fire rockets into Israel.

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