Washington - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Friday charged that Hamas is holding the people of Gaza hostage and warned that a ceasefire, to be acceptable, must be "durable."

She said a "durable and sustainable" ceasefire would be one which would not allow Hamas to "continue to launch rockets out of Gaza."

"We're going to continue our work toward a ceasefire that will not allow a return to the status quo ante and that will be durable," Rice told reporterse after briefing US President George W Bush.

Vienna - Around 6,000 protesters gathered in Vienna on Friday to protest Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip, according to police estimates, in a demonstration largely organized by Muslim groups.

While most signs carried by demonstrators read "Stop the massacre in Gaza," some in the crowd in Vienna's city centre had placards saying: "I have a dream: A world without Israel."

"Many people must scream," said Reyep Imanz, a 24-year-old immigrant from Turkey. "Maybe Israel's president hears us and calls back his army."

Some 400,000 Muslims live in Austria, accounting for over 4 per cent of the population. Many of them have their roots in Turkey and the former Yugoslavia.

Beirut  - Thousands of protesters from various Palestinian and Lebanese groups demonstrated Friday in front the Egyptian Embassy in the capital Beirut to protest what they described as "the Arab stand" towards the Gaza attack.

"Where are the Arabs? What is this silence?", read one of the placards carried by the protesters.

The crowd carried coffins wrapped in black and Palestinian flags while they moved through the streets from the United Nations headquarters towards the Egyptian embassy.

The demonstrators staged a sit-in in front of the UN headquarters in downtown Beirut.

Tel Aviv  - Hamas resumed its rocket attacks on southern Israel Friday morning, ending a lull during the night by launching at least seven Russian-type Grad missiles toward the southern Israeli coa

Tel Aviv  - The Israeli military denied Friday that it had renewed Israel's policy of targeted killings of top Hamas political leaders, saying the target of the airstrike that killed Nizar Rayan had been his house, which stored "large amounts of rockets and explosives."

Rayan's entire family was nearly wiped out when the Israel Air Force bombed his house Thursday in the crowded refugee camp of Jabaliya, north of Gaza City.

The Hamas leader, as well as all of his four wives and 11 of his 12 children were killed, Hamas said. The four-storey house was reduced to its bare concrete core, its front and top floors completely ripped off, leaving gaping holes that exposed the inside of those lower-level rooms still standing.

Gaza/Tel Aviv - Israel pressed on with its relentless air raids against Hamas on the seventh day of its Gaza offensive, striking some 20 targets of the radical Islamic movement ruling Gaza early Friday, a military spokeswoman said.

The military imposed a one-day closure on the West Bank which began at midnight and police were on high alert to prevent unrest during Friday's Muslim prayers at Jerusalem's al-Aqsa Mosque. Police limited entry to the Old City to Muslim men aged 50 or older from Israel or East Jerusalem, with Israeli identity cards.

Israel also announced that it would permit some 400 foreigners living in Gaza to leave the war zone on Friday, after receiving requests and coordinating with foreign embassies, Israel Radio reported.