The bombing was one of more than a dozen across the Gaza Strip after midnight, though Israel called off a planned ground invasion of northern Gaza on Thursday in order to give diplomacy another chance.

An Israeli soldier reloads a mobile artillery piece after firing towards the Gaza Strip at a position near Kibbutz Nahal Oz, just outside the northern Gaza Strip,Thursday June 29, 2006. [AP]

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said militants agreed to a conditional release of the kidnapped soldier but that Israel had yet to accept their terms, which he did not specify. Israel said it was not familiar with any such offer.

No one was hurt in the strike on the Interior Ministry in downtown Gaza City. The Israeli military said the ministry office, controlled by Hamas, was "a meeting place to plan and direct terror activity." The Interior Ministry is nominally in charge of Palestinian security forces, though moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas removed most of its authority.

Israeli warplanes also hit a Fatah office and a Hamas facility in Gaza City as well as roads and open fields. During the day, aircraft and artillery pounded sites across the coastal strip, including suspected weapons factories, an electrical transformer and militant training camps.

Palestinian hospital officials said a 5-year-old girl was wounded in a northern airstrike early Friday, the first casualty in more than two days of military action that began with a ground invasion of southern Gaza. Doctors said her condition was not serious.

On Gaza's southern border, hundreds of Palestinian and Egyptian police formed human cordons to block Palestinians trying to escape into Egypt after militants blasted a hole in a cement wall near the crossing.

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