The Israeli army made three separate overnight incursions into autonomous Palestinian areas of the Gaza Strip while keeping up its siege on the West Bank headquarters of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Arafat on Monday rejected Israel's terms for lifting its siege of his battered offices in Ramallah as Washington and the world community stepped up pressure on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Sharon, not only maintained his forces around Arafat'S offices, having destroyed the other buildings in the compound, but announced that he intended to hit Palestinian Islamist organisations based in the Gaza Strip, Israeli public television reported.

"We have not achieved our mission in the Gaza Strip. The day will come when we will have to hit Hamas and the Islamic Jihad," he said during a ceremony in Jerusalem.

Within hours, Israeli forces had launched a deadly raid on the Shejaya neighbourhood of Gaza City.

Three of the Palestinans victims were killed when tanks and helicopters opened fire simultaneously on the area.

They were named as Yassin Nasser, 53, an activist in the radical Hamas movement, Jaber al-Kharazi, 20, a militant of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Yasser Arafat's mainstream Fatah movement, and Mahmud Kichkom, around the same age.

Six other Palestinians, one of whom remained unidentified, were killed soon afterwards by tank-shell fire on a street near their homes, the sources said.

At least 20 other Palestinians were also injured in the attack, sources said, with three in critical condition.

Two explosions were heard during the incursion as Israeli troops dynamited local metal workshops and another building in Shejaya and the neighbouring Zeitun area before withdrawing, witnesses said.

Israeli forces made two other overnight incursions into the Gaza Strip, Palestinian security forces said.

Ten Israeli tanks accompanied by a bulldozer rolled two kilometres (more than a mile) into the Beit Lahia area, in the northern Gaza Strip, without opening fire, the sources said.

Elsewhere Israeli armoured cars took up positions east of the Jabalya refugee camp, also in northern Gaza.

There was no immediate confirmation of the incursions from the Israeli army.

Arafat's rejection of Israel's demand for a list of names of 250 people holed up with him in Ramallah came as the UN Security Council debated the crisis in New York and Greece announced a delegation from the four main diplomatic players was heading to the region in a bid to calm the crisis.

Palestinian representative to the UN Nasser Al-Kidwa asked the UN council to adopt "a clear resolution" demanding Israel immediately lift its siege of Arafat's headquarters.

However US Ambassador John Negroponte said the United States "will not support the adoption of a one-sided text that fails to recognize that this conflict has two sides" and called on the council also to condemn Palestinian suicide attacks.

Aides to Negroponte later circulated an alternative draft resolution calling on the Palestinian Authority "to implement its expressed commitment to ensure that those responsible for terrorist acts are brought to justice."

Earlier, in Cairo, the 22-member Arab League called on the UN and its secretary general, Kofi Annan, to "step in immediately to stop the continuing Israeli barbaric aggression" against the Palestinians.

Annan began the council meeting with an appeal to Israelis and Palestinians to abandon the "bankrupt policy" of trying to force each other to capitulate.

"The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not going to be resolved by military might alone, or by violent means of any kind," Annan said.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told Nampa-AFP that he feared for Arafat's safety.

"I saw the situation is very bad and very dangerous inside," Erakat complained in a phone conversation with Nampa-AFP, referring to fears the building could collapse.

Israel stormed Arafat's compound on Thursday night in retaliation for back-to-back suicide bombings, tearing down everything around his office after he refused to hand over some 20 members of his entourage it accuses of links to militant groups.

The 73-year-old leader delivered a defiant speech by telephone Monday to some 3,000 Palestinian students who gathered at Bethlehem university to demonstrate their support.

"The situation is dangerous, but the people can face all dangers. The Palestinian people has seen more dangerous situations than this and won," Arafat said from his besieged headquarters.

The Greek government announced that delegates from the United States as well as the European Union, Russia and the United Nations -- the so-called quartet -- were headed to the region Monday.

Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou said his Danish counterpart Per Stig Moeller, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, had told him the aim of the quartet's visit was to "ensure Israel's security and the creation of a Palestinian state".

"There are extremist political forces on both sides which do not want the peace process," Papandreou said.

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