With Israel showing no let-up in its deadly offensive, launched with the twin aims of retrieving 19-year-old Corporal Gilad Shalit and stopping Palestinian rocket fire, a civilian was killed by tank fire in Beit Hanun.
Israeli troops have been operating for the past two days in the northern town, where three gunmen were wounded in attacks on Monday and others managed to fire six rockets into southern Israel in retaliation.
Operation Summer Rain has now left at least 85 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier dead, with Israel opening a second front, waging six days of war in Lebanon after Hizbullah captured another two soldiers last week.
Israel confirmed the overnight attack on the foreign ministry, accusing minister Mahmoud Al Zahar, a leading member of Hamas, whose armed wing was jointly responsible for Shalit's abduction, of planning "terrorist attacks."
An F-16 jet dropped a missile on the building, which had already been badly damaged in a raid on July 13, pancaking the five-storey ministry and causing extensive damage to the neighboring planning and finance ministries.
"It was headed by Mahmoud Al Zahar, a senior member of Hamas involved in the planning of terror attacks and general activity of the Hamas terror organization," an Israeli spokesman said.
The Palestinian foreign ministry denounced attacks on civilian ministries as a "violation of human rights" and a "war crime" that would "only lead to more death and destruction."
Three local residents living in nearby houses were also wounded in the aerial attack, medical and security sources said. Israel has already bombed the Gaza offices of Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, the head of the Hamas-led government, and those of his interior minister Siad Siam this month.
Ground troops have also rounded up a third of the Hamas cabinet in the occupied West Bank, although one of the ministers has since been released.
Other overnight airstrikes targeted a security post used by a special Hamas paramilitary force in the refugee camp of Jabaliya and wounded two gunmen in an attack on a group of militants in Beit Hanun, security sources said.
A 20-year-old local resident was killed and a Palestinian gunman from an armed group that fired on the Israelis was left seriously wounded when an Israeli tank opened fire in Beit Hanun early on Monday, a medical source said.
Tanks, armored vehicles, and bulldozers rolled into Beit Hanun early on Sunday, in the deepest Israeli incursion into the area since Israel began its punishing offensive on June 28, three days after Shalit was seized.
"The Israeli army controls nearly 80 percent of the town," said Sofian Hamed, director general of the Hamas-run Beit Hanun municipality, saying that tanks and bulldozers were downtown and snipers positioned on roofs.
Hamed said that infrastructure, orchards, the electricity network, water and sewage systems had been damaged in the incursion.
"The situation at the hospital is critical. We don't have electricity and our fuel reserves to make the generators work have been used up," said director of Beit Hanun hospital, Mohammed Al Bassuni.
Aid groups have expressed concern about the difficulties of providing assistance to 1.4 million people living in Gaza following months of financial crisis and the suspension of direct Western aid to the Hamas-led government.
Shalit's abduction sparked the worst Israeli-Palestinian crisis since the Hamas-led government was elected in January polls and some of the deadliest fighting in the Palestinian territories for years.
Israel has refused any negotiations with Hamas, a movement that formally advocates the destruction of the Jewish state, vowing the assault will continue "in places, in time, in measures" of its choosing.
© 2006 Agence France-Presse