Ramallah- Some 3,000 Palestinians marched in the West Bank city of Ramallah Friday to protest Israel's offensive in Gaza, waving Palestinian flags, chanting "the blood of the martyrs will not go to waste," and holding up signs calling for West Bank-Gaza unity.

Women holding up copies of the Koran chanted slogans in support of Hamas, as Palestinian police in uniform walked behind but did not try to stop them.

Gaza City /Tel Aviv - Top Israeli diplomats were heading for Washington and once again to Cairo to work out the details of a truce in Gaza, as fighting in the strip continued Friday and the Palestinian death toll topped 1,100.

As Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni left Thursday night for the US to sign an agreement on joint intelligence cooperation against weapons smuggling to Gaza, another senior official, Amos Gilad, was returning to Egypt where he had heard Hamas' position on an Egyptian ceasefire initiative on Thursday.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who spent the night in Jerusalem, was also due to travel to the nearby West Bank city of Ramallah for talks with Palestinian caretaker Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Riyadh  - Seeking unity on the crisis in Gaza ahead of an event next week in Kuwait, leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states gathered in Saudi Arabia on Thursday.

"The Riyadh meeting helped the Gulf states adopt a united stance towards the situation in Gaza," Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal told a press briefing after the GCC summit ended.

Gaza City  An Israeli aircraft Thursday afternoon killed Said Siam, the minister of the interior in the Hamas administration in the Gaza Strip, the al-Quds radio station of the radical Islamic Jihad movement announced.

Siam's brother was also killed in the strike on his brother's house, as was the head of Hamas' security apparatus, Salah Abu Shreh.

Siam, one of the top Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip, is the most senior figure in the Islamist movement to be killed since Israel launched Operation Cast Lead against Hamas on December 27.

Gaza City - Israel upped its pressure on Palestinian militants Thursday, with ground troops advancing close to the centre of Gaza City in one of the worst days of fighting since the assault began and amid growing signs that the offensive could be in its final days.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told a news conference in Tel Aviv that the elements were there for a ceasefire to be in place "reasonably soon," but added that how soon depended on the "political will of the Israeli government."

Gaza - Patients and staff at the al-Quds hospital in the Gaza Strip were still under gunfire Thursday afternoon, hours after a shell hit the building causing a large fire.

"We are a civilian hospital and we are under siege," said Regis Garrigue, a doctor from France who was volunteering at the hospital, which was marked with Red Crescent flags.

Fire brigades, escorting by the International Red Cross in coordination with the Israeli military, were after a few hours able to extinguish the fire, which ravaged one wing of the hospital.