Israel's offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip was set to enter its third week on Saturday, with both sides brushing off a UN appeal to halt devastating attacks that have claimed over 800 lives.

As the humanitarian situation continued to deteriorate, the best that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon could do was ring up Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to express disappointment over the Jewish state's defiance of a Security Council call for an immediate ceasefire.

"The Secretary General spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert by phone this afternoon and expressed his disappointment that the violence is continuing on the ground in disregard of yesterday's Security Council resolution," Ban's spokesperson Michele Montas said late on Friday.

Israel won't bow to 'outside influence'

Israel's attacks on Gaza went on into the night, when a Palestinian man was killed by an Israeli air raid on a house in the Shati refugee camp on the outskirts of Gaza City, medics said.

Olmert said on Friday that Israel would not bow to "outside influence" as its aircraft carried out scores of bombings and the army's tanks shelled several locations despite an announced three-hour "humanitarian" lull.

Hamas meanwhile said it would not accept any ceasefire with Israel that did not see the lifting of a crippling blockade of the impoverished territory enacted when the Islamist movement seized power in Gaza in June 2007.

The humanitarian impact of Operation Cast Lead was also becoming more acute with the UN warning that families were going hungry as food supplies dry up.

Israel launched its war against the Islamists on 27 December aiming to end rocket attacks in southern Israel and the smuggling of weapons into Gaza through tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border.

Both sides rejected resolution

"Israel has never agreed for any outside influence to decide on its right to defend its citizens," Olmert said in a statement before the country's security council agreed to press ahead with the offensive.

Mussa Abu Marzuk, the Damascus-based deputy head of the Hamas politburo, said movement would reject any ceasefire that did not lift the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.

"There will be no acceptance of any (proposal) that does not call for an end to the blockade and the opening of the border crossings," he told AFP.

"Hamas has no comments on the (UN) resolution, because it has not been asked to accept or reject it."

The UN's Montas said Ban "is obviously concerned that the violence is continuing despite yesterday's resolution and hopes it will come to a stop very soon."

"The (Security) Council has clearly said what should happen and the parties should comply. There needs to be an immediate, durable and fully respected cease-fire leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza," the spokesperson quoted the UN chief as saying.

Montas said Ban is continuing his contacts with political leaders in the region and the international community "in hopes of ensuring that Resolution 1860 is implemented without delay."

At least 800 dead

During Friday, Israel staged around 100 strikes on Gaza, which Gaza medics said had killed over 30 people, nearly half of them civilians. The army had arrested some 300 Palestinians in the north of the strip, witnesses said.

Hamas and its allies fired more than 30 rockets into southern Israel, injuring one person, the military said. At least four Grad rockets hit Beersheva, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Gaza.

Muawiya Hassanein, the head of Gaza's emergency services, said at least 800 people are now known to have been killed since 27 December and another 3330 wounded. The dead include at least 230 children and 92 women.

Ten Israeli soldiers and three civilians have been killed in combat or rocket attacks into Israel over the same period.

The violence on the ground has prompted the United Nations' main aid agency in Gaza, UNRWA, to halt to all its operations, raising fears the territory's beleaguered 1.5 million population will soon go hungry.

"Eighty percent of the population is in need right now, maybe even beyond that," Nancy Ronan, a spokesperson for the UN's World Food Programme, told AFP.

"We got food into Gaza, but we now have a problem distributing it because of the security situation."

Arab anger at the conflict meanwhile intensified, with more than 50 000 Egyptians rallying after Muslim prayers in the northern city of Alexandria.

Other protests held in Amman, Doha, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Baghdad, Algiers, and several European capitals.

A rally in the West Bank city of Ramallah turned into a display of the deep divisions among Palestinians, with fist fights breaking out between supporters of Hamas and Abbas's rival Fatah faction.

"Is it Israel's fault that Hamas brings pea shooters to a gun fight? War is war and if you (are) planning on attacking someone, you must accept the consequences." – an iafrica.com reader.

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AFP