Palestinian militants on Monday gave Israel 24 hours to start releasing hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, as Israeli army resumed its ground operation in Gaza on Monday night.

Early Monday morning, Hamas' military wing, one of the three groups holding Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, issued a statement giving Israel until 6 a.m.local time Tuesday to "start" releasing the Palestinian prisoners.

If Israel does not comply, the Hamas military wing will "consider the soldier's case to be close," and "then the enemy must bear all the consequences of the future results," the statement said.

But Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert rejected any negotiations with the militants and Israeli forces continued its Gaza offensive, which was launched after Shalit was captured by militants in an attack against Israeli army position southeast of Gaza-Israel border on June 25.

The kidnappers said they would only free the Israeli soldier if Israel releases some 1,400 prisoners in Israeli jails. Israel has so far rejected a prisoner swap, insisting on the unconditional release of Shalit.

On Monday night, Palestinian eyewitnesses and security sources said Israeli army resumed its ground operation in Gaza as dozens of army tanks, Armored Personnel Carriers (APC), vehicles and bulldozers raided the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun.

Eyewitnesses said that they saw from the top roofs of their homes in the town columns of tanks turning their front lights in the middle of darkness and moving to reoccupy the town with 30,000 populations.

Security officials asserted that the Israeli army resumed its " Summer Rains" ground military offensive into the Gaza Strip, which was postponed on Friday night to give diplomatic efforts another chance to free Shalit.

Shortly afterwards, one Palestinian was killed and two were injured by the fragments of a rocket fired by an Israeli army reconnaissance drone also in the town of Beit Hanoun.

Witnesses said that an air-to-ground rocket was fired at an area northeast of the town, adding that the fragments of the rocket wounded three civilians, and one of them died later.

Witnesses said that the dead was a militant of the ruling Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and he was killed as he was trying to plant a roadside bomb in the area.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) clarified late Monday night that the aim of its night incursion into northern Gaza Strip was only a limited operation to search for tunnels and roadside bombs.

Palestinians' UN observer Riyad Mansour on Monday urged the UN Security Council to do its part to avoid a major crisis in the Middle East by compelling Israel to stop its offensive in Gaza.

Mansour called the standoff over the kidnapped Israeli soldier "critical," and urged the international community to help keep Israel and the Palestinians, as well as the entire Middle East, from "plunging into an irrevocable cycle of violence."

The council cannot abandon its responsibility "in the face of this rising threat to the already too fragile, tense and instable security situation in the Middle East," Mansour wrote in a letter to France's ambassador, who holds the Security Council presidency for July.

White House press secretary Tony Snow urged the Palestinian militants to release Shalit. "It is the responsibilities of Hamas to return the Israeli soldier. That's how all this got started. We have also been encouraging Israel from the very beginning to practice restraint and continue to do so," he said.

Egypt has been trying to mediate the crisis and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was in Saudi Arabia on Monday to coordinate with the Saudis on a solution to the standoff over Shalit.

Egyptian Information Minister Ahmad Nabih el-Fekki said that the two leaders discussed means to find solutions to the crisis and that they reached an agreement that Egypt should continue its mediating efforts to cool down the tension on the Palestinian territories.

In Turkey, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said he had sent a special envoy to Syria to discuss ways of solving the crisis with President Bashar Assad.

Source: Xinhua