Israeli troops deepen push into Gaza

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) - Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip killed more than 30 Palestinian civilians on Tuesday, medical officials said, and international efforts to secure a ceasefire focused on an Israeli demand to prevent Hamas from rearming.

"That is the make-or-break issue," Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said about ensuring an end to weapons smuggling along the Gaza-Egypt frontier.

A senior Israeli official said French President Nicolas Sarkozy, on a Middle East visit and in partnership with Egypt, was pursuing "a serious initiative" for a ceasefire in Israel's 11-day-old operation and Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli towns.

Talks were focusing, the official said, on the size of an "international presence" along the blockaded Gaza-Egypt border, where rockets and other weapons have reached Hamas through a network of tunnels.

Tony Blair, the Middle East envoy of major powers sponsoring Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, said Sarkozy, the European Union and the United States were all in agreement that new anti-smuggling measures would be needed to clinch a ceasefire.

"What is being talked about is a credible plan to stop the smuggling," Blair, a former British prime minister, told reporters in Jerusalem.

He said he hoped the plan could be completed quickly and that enhanced Israeli security would lead to "a significant advance in opening up Gaza to the outside world."

In Damascus, Sarkozy, who met Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday, said after talks with President Bashar al-Assad he had no doubt the Syrian leader "will throw all his weight to convince every one to return to reason."

Syria is one of the main backers of Hamas, an Islamist group that seized the Gaza Strip from Abbas's Fatah group in fighting in 2007.

Hamas, which has rebuffed Western demands to recognize Israel, end violence and accept existing interim peace deals, has demanded a lifting of the blockade of the Gaza Strip in any future ceasefire.

CIVILIAN DEATHTOLL RISES

Palestinian witnesses said Israeli forces pushed into Khan Younis in southern Gaza as the army widened the ground assault it launched four days ago against Hamas militants after a week of air strikes failed to stamp out cross-border rocket fire.

Palestinian medical officials said 35 Palestinian civilians were killed on Tuesday, including 11 in a house that was bombed from the air, 10 on a beach hit by naval shells and three people who had taken refuge in a U.N.-run school.

Four militants also were killed, medical officials said.

Deaths recorded by Palestinian medics reached 588.