Israel warns of more Gaza attacks

The security Cabinet is due to meet to consider various plans for a ground invasion, a defence official said.

And there were reports Israel was considering a temporary "humanitarian" truce to allow vital aid supplies into the area.

But Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the current, aerial phase of the operation was just "the first of several" that have been approved.

Palestinian militants, meanwhile, kept up their rocket assaults on Israeli border communities, despite a fourth day of Israeli air attacks and a refusal by Egypt to bail them out.

Israeli warplanes smashed a Hamas government complex, the largest one hit so far, dumping the biggest single load of bombs on the buildings, which had been evacuated since the bombardment began on Saturday. Israel also hit security installations and the home of a top militant commander.

More than 370 Palestinians have now been killed since Saturday. Most were members of Hamas security forces, and at least 64 civilians also died. Among them were two sisters, aged four and 11, killed in an airstrike on a rocket squad in northern Gaza on Tuesday.

During brief lulls between airstrikes, Gazans ventured into the streets to buy goods and collect belongings from homes they had abandoned after the attacks started.

The campaign has brought a new reality to southern Israel, too. Militants, battered but unbowed, pressed on with their rocket and mortar assaults, killing three Israeli civilians and a soldier and bringing a widening circle of targets into their sights with an arsenal of mightier weapons.

The military estimated that one-tenth of Israel's population of seven million people are now within rocket range, with the battles shifting closer to Israel's heartland. Of the four Israelis killed since the operation began on Saturday, all but one were in areas that had not suffered fatalities before.