Israeli troops have arrested 64 Hamas officials including nine Cabinet ministers as the Middle East crisis sparked by the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier continued to escalate.

As Israeli artillery battered northern Gaza today, jets dropped leaflets on militant strongholds warning families to stay indoors ahead of an expected land incursion.

Israel is now preparing a massive ground offensive in Gaza. In response, the armed Palestinian group holding the kidnapped soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit, threatened to kill him if Israel continues to escalate violence.

The Popular Resistance Committee, a shadowy militant group, said the Israeli government would also bear the responsibility for kidnappings of other soldiers if the reprisals heightened.

"Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and (Defence Minister) Amir Peretz will be entirely responsible for the life of the kidnapped soldier if the aggression continues," PRC spokesman Abu Abir told AFP.

He said that all armed Palestinian groups had set up a special unit whose main aim would be to abduct Israeli servicemen should the Jewish state continue to carry out incursions into Palestinian areas.

The PRC also announced that it had killed Eliyahu Yitzhak Asheri, the 18-year old Jewish settler kidnapped on Monday. His body was uncovered by Israeli troops near the village of Beitunia, not far from the West Bank political capital of Ramallah.

Nine ministers in the 24-member Palestinian cabinet together with 24 MPs from the Islamist faction, were taken in a raid on a complex of buildings in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Nasser Shaer, the Deputy Prime Minister, and the minister of religious affairs, Nasser Nayef Rajoub, are among those now held in Israeli custody.

The governing Hamas movement then accused Israel of launching an "open war" to destroy the Palestinian government.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president condemned the arrests and called on the international community to intervene immediately.

"The President strongly condemns the Israeli aggression, raids, siege (on the Gaza Strip) and arrests of ministers and MPs," his spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said.

Times Recommends

• No apology for Germany’s own Nazi victims
• Intricate web of fear and hope tying down deal
• Victims remembered a year after Mumbai attacks