THERE WAS no let-up in the fighting yesterday as Israeli aircraft continued to hit targets across the Gaza Strip and militants fired more than 30 rockets into southern Israel.
Thousands of Israeli troops along the border were waiting for orders to begin a ground offensive.
Three factors pointed to an imminent incursion: weather forecasts indicating a dry spell; the anticipation of stepped-up diplomatic efforts next week to stop the fighting; and yesterday's decision by Israel to allow foreign nationals to leave Gaza.
Some 20 homes belonging to Hamas activists were hit yesterday, although the militants themselves were not present when the attacks took place. The Israeli military phoned neighbours a few minutes before the attacks, telling them to leave the area.
Palestinian sources reported that three children, all from the same family, were killed in Khan Younis, in the south of the Gaza Strip.
A mosque was also destroyed in Jebalya in the north of the strip - the fifth to be targeted so far.
An Israeli military official said the mosque was used to store rockets, claiming that the large number of secondary explosions which followed the initial impact proved the point.
Israeli jets also pounded the southern tip of the strip again, along the border with Egypt, targeting smuggling tunnels.
Despite the fear of more air strikes, thousands of Gaza residents turned out for the funeral of Hamas leader Nizar Rayan, who was killed with members of his family on Thursday when a one-tonne bomb hit his home.
Hamas member of parliament Mushir Masri told the crowd that the Palestinian resistance "will not forget and will not forgive".
Israel opened the Erez crossing, at the northern end of the strip, to allow 300 foreign nationals to leave the war zone.
Most were Russian or east European women, married to Palestinians, who left with their children.
The Israeli authorities announced that the Erez crossing would be open tomorrow to allow some of the Palestinians wounded in the bombing campaign to receive treatment in Israeli hospitals.
Israeli group Physicians for Human Rights, which pushed for the transfer of the wounded, said the Palestinian Authority was unwilling to pay for their medical treatment, claiming Hamas was responsible.
The death toll from six days of fighting now stands at at least 420, and a United Nations official said more than one-quarter of these are civilians.
Of six Palestinians reported killed yesterday in more than 30 Israeli air strikes, five were civilians, local medics said.
One missile killed three Palestinian children aged between eight and 12 as they played on a street near the town of Khan Younis in the south of the strip. One was decapitated.
Sixty-four trucks carrying humanitarian supplies were allowed through the Israeli-controlled border crossing points yesterday.
Maxwell Gaylard, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator for the Palestinian territories, said that although Israel was allowing humanitarian convoys through, Gaza residents still faced a food and medical crisis.
An interim analysis conducted by the Israel defence forces concluded that the Hamas rocket threat to southern Israel was less serious than originally presumed, and residents were not showing signs of panic.
Militants have fired more than 350 rockets into Israel since Saturday, killing three civilians and a soldier.
At least 40 of these rockets were long-range Katyushas.
Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, speaking during a tour of the south, said that Hamas's capabilities "cannot be compared" with those of Hizbullah, which fired almost 4,000 rockets into Israel from southern Lebanon during the one-month war in the summer of 2006.
Police went on high alert throughout Israel yesterday, and a weekend curfew was clamped on the West Bank.
Hundreds of Arabs clashed with police in Jerusalem after yesterday's Friday Muslim prayers and all football matches scheduled for the weekend between Jewish and Arab teams were postponed.