New York - Arab governments are planning to meet Monday in New York to discuss an end to the Israel-Hamas fighting, a representative of the Arab League said Friday.

New York - A United Nations official said Friday arrangements should be worked out to end the current fighting between Israel and Hamas, including bringing the Palestinian Authority back in control of the Gaza Strip.

Robert Serry, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process based in Jerusalem, said an immediate ceasefire has become "imperative."

Tel Aviv  - International journalists demanded unfettered access to Gaza Friday and protested Israeli government attempts to limit the entry of reporters into the strip.

The Foreign Press Association (FPA), the body representing foreign correspondents working in Israel and the Palestinian autonomous areas, said it was "dismayed" the Israeli government allowed no journalists to enter Gaza on Friday, despite an Israeli High Court decision that it should allow limited access.

The Jerusalem court ruled Friday morning the government should allow into Gaza small groups of eight to 12 journalists at a time, who must share their information with other reporters - a practice called "pool sharing" in journalism.

Gaza/Tel Aviv - Hamas declared Friday a "day of rage" to mark one week of incessant Israeli air raids in Gaza, and vowed to avenge the killing of a top leader, Nizar Rayan, along with nearly his entire family in one airstrike in northern Gaza the previous afternoon.

Israel continued to focus on, and keep up, its air raids on the seventh day of its offensive, but ground troops were waiting along the Gaza border for orders to enter.

At least eight Palestinians - three of them children - were killed as a military spokesman said Israel pounded 20 more targets overnight and some 35 later throughout the day.

Brussels/Prague - The European Union is to send a beefed-up peace mission to the Middle East in a bid to end the ongoing conflict between Israel and Islamic group Hamas, EU officials said Friday.

As well as Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, EU top diplomat Javier Solana and Foreign Affairs Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and his Swedish counterpart Carl Bildt are set to join the mission.

The Czech Republic took over the EU's rotating presidency from France on Thursday and is set to hand it on to Sweden on July 1.

Gaza/Tel Aviv - After a week of relentless Israeli air raids on the Gaza Strip, Israeli ground troops along the Gaza border are readying for an order for an incursion.

Since Israel launched its offensive shortly after 11 am (0900 GMT) last Saturday, its air force has destroyed more than 700 targets, a military spokeswoman in Tel Aviv said Friday.

At least 100 smuggling tunnels under the border with Egypt, as well as police stations, offices, houses, vehicles and rocket launching-, storing- and production sites belonging to the radical Islamic Hamas movement and its activists, were hit, many more than once.

After one week, the Israel Air Force's "pool of targets are close to exhaustion," one Israeli government official said.