"The cabinet decided to continue with the military operation," a senior government official told AFP after a six-hour meeting of the country's security cabinet that debated international truce proposals.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the meeting that conditions were not yet ripe to halt the bombardment launched in response to persistent rocket fire from the enclave that Hamas has run for a year and a half.

"We did not launch the Gaza operation only to end it with the same rocket firing that we had at its start," the official quoted Olmert as saying.

"If the conditions are ripe and we think that they might offer a solution that will guarantee a better security reality in the south, then we would weigh the issue. We are not there yet."

Amid mushrooming protests around the globe, world diplomats have been scrambling to find a way to stop one of Israel's deadliest ever offensives on the Gaza Strip that has so far killed at least 393 Palestinians.

There was no let-up in the violence on Wednesday, with Israel conducting nearly 60 air strikes and Hamas firing more than 50 rockets.

The Islamist rulers of Gaza said they had not been given any concrete truce proposal but would consider one under certain conditions.

"If such a proposition is made to us, we will examine it as we are favourable to any initiative that will put an end to the aggression and totally lift the blockade," senior Hamas official Ayman Taha said in Gaza.

The exiled head of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, echoed the sentiment in a phone call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, voicing "readiness to cease armed confrontation but on condition of the lifting of the blockade of Gaza," the Russian ministry said in a statement.

Israel has warned that its "all-out war" on Hamas could last for weeks, has massed tanks on the border of the territory and authorised the call-up of 9,000 reservists, warning of a ground incursion.

"Our ground forces are still deployed around the Gaza Strip and are ready to go in, if given the order," an army spokeswoman told AFP on Wednesday.

Since it was launched on Saturday, the Israeli offensive has killed at least 393 people, including 42 children, and wounded more than 1,900 others, according to Gaza medics.

At least 25 percent of those killed have been civilians, the United Nations said.

The intensive bombardment has reduced much of Hamas's administrative infrastructure in the territory to rubble but has failed to stop rocket fire into Israel.

Since the start of the Israeli onslaught, Gaza militants have fired more than 250 rockets, killing three civilians and one soldier and wounding several dozen people.

Five of the rockets fired since late on Tuesday slammed into the desert town of Beersheba some 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the Gaza border -- the deepest yet that its projectiles have reached inside Israel.

Hamas has also threatened to carry out suicide attacks inside Israel for the first time since January 2005.

As protests were held in countries from the United States to Iran, diplomatic efforts gathered pace to stop the violence.

On Wednesday, the prime minister of Israel's top Muslim ally Turkey condemned the offensive as "ruthless" and again called for a halt before the "dangerous developments" lead to "irreversible developments in the region."

"The attacks on Gaza should stop immediately and a permanent ceasefire should be urgently secured to prevent irreversible developments in the region," Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters.

The bombardment has raised concern about the humanitarian situation in Gaza, a tiny, aid-dependent territory of 1.5 million people which Israel has virtually sealed off since Hamas seized power in June 2007.

"Gaza's hospitals are facing their largest ever trauma caseloads under some of the most adverse conditions imaginable," UN humanitarian coordinator Maxwell Gaylard said.

Israel opened one of its border crossings with Gaza again on Wednesday, bringing to 179 the number of lorryloads of supplies delivered since the Gaza bombardment began, the army said.

Several Arab countries meanwhile cancelled New Year's Eve festivities in solidarity with Gaza. In the occupied West Bank, celebrations, which are low-key at the best of times, were expected to be particularly subdued, while civil defence officials urged residents in southern Israel to stay indoors.

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