Turkey and Egypt urged Israel to "immediately" stop its deadly offensive in the Gaza Strip on Monday. Speaking at a press conference with visiting Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan also said indirect talks between Israel and Syria that Turkey has been mediating since May had become "impossible" after the onslaught in Gaza.

"We call on Israel to immediately stop the military operation," Babacan told reporters. "The continuation of the conflict may spread beyond the boundaries of Gaza and reach another phase that would pose a serious risk for the region," he said.

As the press conference was being held in Ankara, Israeli aircraft destroyed a bastion of Hamas' rule over the Gaza Strip on Monday, the third day of an offensive that has killed more than 300 Palestinians in the deadliest violence in the territory in decades.

"We have an all-out war against Hamas and its kind," Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in parliament, using a term he has employed in the past to describe a long-term struggle against Israel's Islamist enemies.

Broadening their targets to include the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip, Israeli warplanes bombed the Interior Ministry, which supervises 13,000 members of the group's security forces. The building had been evacuated and there were no casualties.

Hamas, an Islamist movement, defied the Israeli assaults, the fiercest in the coastal enclave since the 1967 Middle East war. Its forces fired a rocket salvo into the Israeli city of Ashkelon, killing one person, the second such fatality since Israeli bombing began on Saturday.

Israel has said the offensive is aimed at halting cross-border rocket attacks that intensified after a six-month, Egyptian-brokered cease-fire with Hamas expired on Dec. 19. Palestinian medical officials put the Gaza death toll at 310, most of them members of Hamas, which took over the Gaza Strip in June 2007.

Babacan, meanwhile, also urged Hamas to halt rocket attacks on Israel and called on the international community to mobilize to provide humanitarian assistance for the Palestinians in the territory.

Describing the situation in the region as at a "very dangerous stage," Gheit said he and Babacan had discussed how an "immediate" cease-fire could be secured.

Gheit had said Sunday that Egypt was trying to broker a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas to be followed by a new truce.

"Turkey and Egypt are two countries that are regional powers and have the power to make an impact," Gheit said, signaling that the two countries could join forces to work to end hostilities between Israel and the Palestinians.

Turkey has terminated efforts to mediate indirect peace talks between Israel and Syria for now, Babacan said.

"The continuation of the talks under these conditions is naturally impossible. To make war on the Israeli-Palestinian track and at the same time make peace on the Israeli-Syrian track -- these two cannot go together," he explained.

Noting that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had discussed progress in talks in Ankara last week, Babacan said Israel's air attacks on Gaza had led to "profound regret and disappointment" in Turkey.

"I repeat my call for an immediate cease-fire. The guns should be silenced and diplomacy should start working," Babacan stressed.

Syria and Israel are bitter foes. They held direct talks in the late 1990s and early 2000, but negotiations broke down over the extent of an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, a strategic territory captured by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Syria insists on the complete return of the Golan Heights, while Israel wants to keep a strip of land around the Sea of Galilee.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the weekend described the Israeli attacks on Gaza as a "crime against humanity." Turkey was angered that the attacks came shortly after a visit to Ankara last week by Olmert to discuss Middle East peace. No Syria-Israel talks have been held since Olmert announced in July that he would be stepping down from office.

Later in the day, Gheit met with President Abdullah Gül and Prime Minister Erdoğan.

"It is not possible to remain silent to the tragedy in Gaza and the international community -- the UN, in particular -- has a big role to play to put an end to this tragedy," Erdoğan told Gheit, sources from the prime minister's office said. He also said the priority for the moment is to transport humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Also yesterday, President Gül had a telephone conversation with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad concerning the situation in the Gaza Strip, Gül's office announced. During the conversation, initiated by Ahmadinejad, Gül emphasized the importance Turkey assigned to arranging an immediate cease-fire and the transportation of humanitarian aid to Gaza, the office said.

On Sunday evening Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni initiated a telephone conversation with Babacan. During the 20-minute conversation, Babacan explained Turkey's concerns and reiterated its call for Israel to end its attacks on the Gaza Strip, as well as its blockade of the region. Livni claimed that the Israeli air strikes were launched only against military targets. However, a Turkish diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, stressed that almost half of Gaza's population was younger than 18 years of age.

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